
GassBK I 5 & 
GoEyrigMU 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



; ,:. •' -. : : 







Copyi-ightEd 1893. 



Geo F Lasher Littio.Fhila 



THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY 









snfiS 



Hlfflitf 





AN ACCOUNT OF THE STRUGGLES, PERSECUTIONS, WARS, AND 
VICTORIES OF CHRISTIANS OF ALL TIMES. 



WRITTEN AND EDITED BY 



■Ay 



Rev. FREDERIC M. BIRD, 

FORMERLY CHAPLAIN AND PROFESSOR OF 

PSYCHOLOGY, CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND RHETORIC 

IN THE LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, 

WITH A MONOGRAPH ON CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND CHARITY, 

BY 

BENJAMIN HARRISON, 

Ex=President of the United States. 



MAY IT BE THE MEANS OF SHEDDING THE LIGHT OF TRUE 

CHRISTIANITY AT EVERY FIRESIDE, AND INCREASE 

THE APPRECIATION OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. 



THE 350 ILLUSTRATIONS ARE UNEQUALLED, MANY BEING DRAWN BY OUR 

OWN ARTISTS, AND OTHERS FROM DESIGNS BY THE 

WORLD'S GREATEST PAINTERS. 

BEAUTIFUL COLORED FULL PAGE PLATES. ^<T^77u7^ 

[^NOV 9 1893 

PHILADELPHIA, PA: VV, 

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\ 







COPYRIGHTED 1893, 
BY GEORGE F. LASHER. 

(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.) 



The illustrations having been specially drawn for this book, all persons are hereby notified that 
they are protected by copyright, and any one reproducing them will be prosecuted. 



PREFACE. 




ROM one point of view it may be said that 
Christians have no business to be fighting ; 
from another, that they may expect to be 
occupied with it most of the time. Their 
Master was the Prince of Peace ; but He 
told them that He came not to bring peace 
on earthy but a sword. There was an "irre- 
pressible conflict " between His ideas and those 
which then prevailed, and are still powerful, 
on earth ; and thus the battle of Armageddon, 
in one shape or another, will go on until the 
kingdoms of this world — and the republics no 
less — really and thoroughly become His. 

On the part of His people this conflict, as 
employing the arm of flesh, has been both 
passive and active. Under their Pagan per- 
secutors the early Christians were as sheep 
led to the slaughter, and yet they were no less 
contending for the faith, which thus, within 
three centuries, outwardly and nominally over- 
came the world. In later days it was often 
possible and right for the oppressed to gather 
together, and, opposing violence by violence, 
to win deliverance from oppression. In either case they stood for the most 
precious of human possessions, liberty of conscience, and vindicated the sacred 
right of thinking and acting, in the highest matters, according to what they 
believed to be God's will. 

In this history of Persecutions and Religious Wars, it is intended to follow 
out the line of thought above indicated, and to acknowledge some of the greatest 
benefactions that have been bestowed, both in example and in accomplishment, 
by human beings upon their fellow-men. 

The tale of the Maccabees furnishes a fit prelude to the long list of Christian 
conflicts. They were Jews, but in spirit and in life they were the ancestors of 
apostles and evangelists. With them, as afterwards, the Church was militant. 
Their story foreshadows that of any subsequent rising for religious freedom ; in 
doing and enduring they were the prototypes of those who since have stood and 
suffered for the faith of Christ. 



6 PREFACE. 

Acknowledgments of obligation are incidentally made in various parts of 
this volume, and may here be repeated more specifically. For Chapters I. and II. 
the apocryphal books of the Maccabees, and Dr. Raphall's "Post-Biblical His- 
tory of the Jews," have been used. For Chapters II.-XL, the works of Neander, 
Milner, Milman, Gibbon, have been drawn upon. In the mediaeval portions, 
reference has been had to Mr. Lea's extremely valuable "History of the 
Inquisition," to Perrin's "History of the Albigenses," to Mr. E. H. Gillett's 
"Life and Times of Huss," and occasionally to Mr. Lecky and other writers. 
For those relating to England, Foxe, Green and Macaulay have been consulted. 
For the Huguenot wars, Dr. Hanna's pleasant volume has been chiefly followed, 
and that of Jonathan D^uncan in some cases. For the Netherlands, no other 
work, of course, can compete with Motley's immortal "Rise of the Dutch 
Republic." The history of persecutions and religious wars has hitherto been 
handled only in sections ; and while we do not pretend to have exhausted 
the subject — for which the labor of many }'ears and the compilation of many 
volumes would be required — it may be safely claimed that no previous volume 
in the English language has covered so many portions of this field, from the 
beginning of systematic persecution and resistance to the coming of a better 
day. May the lesson of so much bloodshed not be pointed in vain ! 




A MONOGRAPH 

ON 

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND CHARITY. 

BY 

BENJAMIN HARRISON. 



"T IBERTY " has always been an enticing word — but a word of uncertain 
i— ' scope and the vaguest limitations. A great multitude of ever}' class 
and station has sung its praises ; but it has not been a full chorus, for one 
man's liberty is another man's limitation, and the latter drops out until the 
parts are changed. But the singers are more numerous, and the volume of 
song stronger and sweeter than ever before — they are catching the spirit of the 
Great Master; and, when the liberty to serve others has its proper esteem in 
our bills of right, the chorus will be full. 

Men were not made to devour one another — the law of size and appetite 
regulates the intercourse of the jungle; but it is not the divine law of human 
intercourse. In one way or another, however, the law of strength and appetite 
has had a long day in human history. Men devoured each other; but they 
mostly selected, with epicurean relish, the things of a man that are finer than 
flesh. 

We can understand the savage who kills to supply his table, and the king 
who kills to extend his dominions — but that one professed disciple of the gentle 
and loving Nazarene should slay or persecute another because he believed, or did 
not, that the Master gave the cup as well as the bread to all His followers, or that 
the bread was a symbol and not the actual body of the Lord, or received, or did 
not, any other of the articles of church or council, is to this generation, in America, 
the mystery of mysteries. We read the long gory story of religious intolerance 
and persecutions with amazed abhorrence — but we should not forget that even 
James and John, looking into the benign eyes of Jesus, asked, " Lord, wilt Thou that 
we command fire to come down from Heaven and consume them ? " If the Master 
had not been present, and James and John had been at the head of an established 
Church, it would have gone hard with the Samaritan villagers. The barbarians 
into whose hands Paul fell knew the uses of fire better. There is little wonder, 



A MONOGRAPH ON 

but great shame, that when the Master was taken away and even His ^ord 
had gone into hiding, the professed disciples of Jesus should again need the 
rebuke, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is 
not come to destroy men's lives but to save them." A propaganda by fire and 
sword is not the Lord's way of setting up a spiritual kingdom. Such a kingdom 
cannot hold a slave — free citizens only can enter it. There is a sense in which 
truth, both in the natural and spiritual world is intolerant. There is one God — 
there can be no compromise here ; but stripes and penalties are wholly irrelevant. 
Jeremy Taylor says : " Understanding being a thing wholly spiritual cannot be 
restrained, and, therefore, neither punished by corporal afflictions. It is in aliena 
Rcpublica — a matter of another world." The champion of error must not be 
denied his horse and lance if the champion of truth expects to be crowned or to 
receive the plaudits of the knightly company that surrounds the lists. It was 
not God's plan to catalogue for us every phase of doctrinal truth and error, and 
to mark them for our acceptance or rejection so plainly that we have only to read 
labels. In the spiritual world, as in the natural, there is much truth to be sought 
out — enough to give a life work to the undying. 

" We limit not the truth of God, 

To our poor reach of mind, 
By notions of our day and sect, 

Crude, partial and confined ; 
No, let a new and better hope 

Within our heart be stirred ; 
The Lord hath yet more light and truth 

To break forth from His word." 

Enough truth for right living and easy dying has been made plain — simple 
enough for the kindergartens. We do not disparage sects or creeds, but neither 
should be unduly multiplied, and the administration should not be with heat and 
rancor, but with humility and love. When the theologians, with flashing eyes 
and fierce gesticulations, cry "Away with Him !" there is great danger that the 
onlookers may conclude that the excised is in fellowship with the cross-bearer, 
though in fact it may be quite otherwise. Truth has been so much persecuted 
that people are quite apt to assume that what is persecuted is truth. A heresy 
trial ought not to be a hunt — the appetite for the chase should be indulged in 
the field, not in the council. The Tin Trumpet says : 

B 




CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND CHARITY. 

"The mutual rancor of conflicting sects is inversely as their distance from 
each other ; no one hating a Jew or a pagan half so much as a fellow-Christian 
who agrees with him in all but one unimportant point." 

This was said long ago, and was then an exaggeration, but with more 
than a grain of truth. It has been less truly descriptive of the churches every 
decade since. The hard lines of intolerance and bigotry have given way, in the 
composite picture of the churches, to those of charity, and we are now in the 
dawn of the promised day when the picture shall no longer be composite, but 
single. Many now living can remember when a member of one denomination 
took great risk, if he worshipped with another, of hearing his own church arraigned. 
There is little risk now. He is likely to hear of truths of common acceptance — 
of the essentials of Christian doctrine, or of the rules of good living. There is not 
less love of the truth, but a more loving way of teaching it. " Old religious fac- 
tions are volcanoes burnt out ; on the lava and ashes and squalid scoria of old 
eruptions grow the peaceful olive, the cheering vine and the sustaining corn." * 

Men's hearts cannot be opened by a petard, nor the cloaks of error stripped 
from their shoulders by assault. A gentle knock at the postern is more likely 
to gain for truth admission and a domicile ; and the old fable should instruct us 
how to get the cloaks off. Heat and the hammer are not adapted to the crushing 
of error — they develop fibre. Living is much more persuasive than logic. Some 
people seem to think that religious truth is necessarily hard and angular — that 
no garment but a sheepskin is appropriate for it ; that it must be fired like a 
shell, and do its work by battering ; when, in fact, it is graceful, adaptable and 
attractive, worthy of crowns and purple robes, and does its work by transforming. 

The World's Congress of Religions, now in session at Chicago, is a delight- 
ful expression of the tolerant spirit of the age. Jew and Moslem, Greek and 
Roman, the followers of Buddha and of Confucius, and the Protestant churches 
of every name, having first mostly abandoned the use of fire and the sword as 
church agencies, have now, in this land of free thought and free churches, 
assembled in convention upon a basis that promises harmony, viz , that each 
shall tell what he knows of his own church, of its doctrines and its work, and 
nothing of what he thinks he knows of other churches. 

It is quite time that the strife as to which is the church should cease, while 
each approves itself to be a church of Jesus Christ by doing His work. None 
can be wholly proud of its history — neither its light nor its charity has been 

* Burke. C 



A MONOGRAPH ON 

full, but both are fuller than ever before in all the Christian churches. There 
has been an apostolic succession, and a Saint's family tree going back to the 
root of the stem of Jesse ; but only the Voice that called the twelve can call the 
roll .of their successors, and God only infallibly knows the names of the Saints. 
Reproaches for past lapses from Christian charity may well be forborne as to 
any church that has accepted in doctrine and in practice the full liberty of the 
individual to worship in the way of his choice, or not to worship at all, without 
burden or penalty ; provided that his teachings and practices do not invade his 
neighbor's liberty ; nor subvert morality, nor impair the security of life and 
property, nor disturb social order or the public peace. The question of the 
Pope's complicity in the assassination of Coligny, or of Calvin's in the burn- 
ing of Servetus, ought not to limit our charity or respect for the followers 
of either. To imitate the faith and steadfastness of the martyrs, not to avenge 
them, is our work. God has wholly reserved to Himself the administration of 
that mysterious law that visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children. 
Nor is it fair to judge men of the sixteenth century by the -light of the 
nineteenth. There has been but one man whose thoughts and life have not 
been outgrown. 

Liberty, whether civil or religious, has necessary limitations — when it over- 
runs it is license. The Supreme Court of the United States recently had under 
review an act of the Territory of Idaho, which provides that no polygamist, or 
< any person who teaches or encourages others to become such, or who is a mem- 
ber of any association that so teaches and counsels others, shall vote or hold 
office in the Territory. It was impeached upon the grounds that it prohibited 
the " free exercise" of religion, and that it established a religious test as a quali- 
fication for office. But the court unanimously sustained the law, holding that 
polygamy was a crime ; that " to call its advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend 
the common sense of mankind." The constitutions of many of the States 
contain the express provision that liberty of conscience shall not be construed to 
justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State. 

Nor should it be forgotten that any interference by the church with the civil 
rights or political opinions of its membership, otherwise than by argument 
or moral suasion, is a gross breach of the compact by which the church secures 
the protection of the State. No ecclesiastical threats, proscriptions or penalties 
can be allowed to affect or control the citizen in civil affairs. We have made these 
things secure in the United States. Popular government and an established 



CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND CHARITY. 

church are incompatible ; and so when we broke from the crown, the church 
establishments were abandoned as of course, and a more helpful relation estab- 
lished between the churches and the State. This is a Christian nation not the 
less, but the more, that it has no church establishment. 

No one thought of vindicating religion for the conscience of the individual 
till a voice in Judea, breaking day for the greatest epoch in the life of humanity, 
by establishing a pure, spiritual and universal religion for all mankind, enjoined 
to render to Caesar only that which is Caesar's. The rule was upheld during the 
infancy of the Gospel for all men. No sooner was this religion adopted by the 
chief of the Roman Empire than it was shorn of its character of universality and 
enthralled by an unholy connection with the unholy state, and so it continued 
till the new nation — the least defiled with the barren scoffings of the eighteenth 
century ; the most general believer in Christianity of any people of that age ; the 
chief heir of the Reformation in its purest form — when it came to establish a 
government for the United States, refused to treat faith as a matter to be regu- 
lated by a corporate body, or having a headship in a monarch or a State 

"Vindicating the right of individuality even in religion, and in religion 
above all, the new nation dared to set the example of accepting in its relations 
to God the principle first divinely ordained in Judea. It left the management 
of temporal things to the temporal power; but the American constitution, in 
harmony with the people of the several States, withheld from the Federal Govern- 
ment the power to invade the home of reason, the citadel of conscience, the 
sanctuary of the soul; and not from indifference btit that the infinite spirit of 
eternal truth might move in its freedom and purity and power." * 

Of the happy results of this policy Mr. Bryce says : 

"There are, moreover, other rancors besides those of social inequality whose 
absence from America brightens it to an European eye. There are no quarrels 
of churches and sects. Judah does not vex Ephraim, nor Ephraim envy Judah. 
No established Church looks down scornfully upon dissenters from the heights of 
its titles and endowments, and talks of them as hindrances in the way of its 
work. No dissenters pursue an established Church in a spirit of watchful jealousy, 
nor agitate for its overthrow. One is not offended by the contrast between the 
theory and the practice of a religion of peace, between professions of universal 
affection in pulpit addresses and forms of prayer, and the acrimony of clerical 
controversialists." 



x Bancroft's History of the Constitution. 



CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND CHARITY. 

We have not attained, but we have progressed. In the year 1560 the 
Chancellor of France, in opening the States-General asked, "Cannot citizens 
of different beliefs live in harmony in the same State ? " Yes, at last. What 
Penn said of Holland is true of the Great Republic : "She cherished her people 
whatsoever were their opinions, as the reasonable stock of the country, the heads 
and hands of her trade and wealth, and making them easy on the main point, 
their conscience, she became great by them. This made her fill up with people 
and they filled her with riches and strength." 



Indianapolis, Indiana, September, 1893. 





ANTIOCHUS TAKING JERUSALEM. 










pi.'!'.' 




.JP^QOOTEN TS.^5.4. 



Preface, 



/> 



CHAPTER I. 
ANTIOCHUS AND THE JEWS. 

The Jews— Ptolemy Philopater— Judea Transferred to Syria — Heliodorus — Jason— Menelaus — 
Massacre in Jerusalem — The Temple Spoiled — Policy of the King— Popilius — Second Mas- 
sacre : Cessation of Temple Worship — The Persecution— Eleazar— The Widow and her Seven 
Sons— The Revolt : Mattathias— Might Jews Fight on the Sabbath? .... 17-36 

CHAPTER IL 
JUDAS, THE DELIVERER. 

Apollonius and Seren Routed— Lysias Regent — Nicanor and Gorgias : Their Defeat— Timotheus 
and Bacchides Beaten : Battle of Bethsura : Recovery of Jerusalem — Fate of Antiochus — 
Activity of Judas — Folly of Joseph and Azariah— Defeat of Lysias : Peace — Campaigns of 
Judas— Siege of Acra — Another Invasion : The Elephants — Death of E'.eazar— Siege of Jeru- 
salem — Judas Royal Governor — Death of Menelaus : Alcimus His Successor — Demetrius 
King — Bacchides— Alcimus and His Uncle : Nicanor: Peace and War — Nicanor's Blasphemy, 
Defeat, and Death— Embassy to Rome— Anger of the Jews— Judas' Last Battle : His Death, 37-63 

CHAPTER III. 
THE AGE OF THE APOSTLES. 

Non-resistance— Jewish Hostility — Causes of Persecution— Imperial and Popular Attacks — 
Nero: First Persecution — Deaths of St. Paul and St. Peter — St. James — Other Apostles — 
Domitian : Third Persecution, ......... 64-77 

CHAPTER IV. 
TRAJAN AND IGNATIUS. 

Ignatius : His Interview with Trajan — His Epistles : His Martyrdom— Pliny's Letter — Hadrian : 

Antoninus Pius, ............ 7S-92 

CHAPTER V. 
HARCUS AURELIUS, THE STOIC. 

Character of the Emperor— Fourth Persecution — Polycarp : Letter of the Church at Smyrna — 

Ptolemy and Lucius— Justin Martyr — Felicitas and Her Sons— The Thundering Legion, 93-106 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE HARTYRS OF LYONS. 

Letter of the Church at Lyons — Vettius— Blandina— Sanctus and Maturus — Biblias — Pothinus — 
Attalus— Alexander — Blandina and Ponticus— Humility of the Confessors— Symphorianus — 
Reign of Commodus, ........... 107-119 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 
SEVERUS AND riAXIHIN. 

Fifth Persecution— Speratus and Others— Perpetua and Felicitas - Sixth Persecution — Philip the 

Arab— Prediction of Origen, . . . . . . . . 120-130 

CHAPTER VIII. 
DECIUS. 

Seventh Persecution —In Alexandria— Escape of Dionysius— At Carthage— The Lapsed— Serapion 

—Reign of Gallus, . ........ 131-142 

CHAPTER IX. 
VALERIAN. 

Eighth Persecution— Cyprian's Banishment: His Death — St. Lawrence— Dionysius Banished: 
Alexandria— Sapricius and Nicephorus — Cyril and Others— Gallienus : The Church Recog- 
nized— Fructviosus— Marinus — Aurelian : Ninth Persecution, ..... 143-156 

CHAPTER X. 
MORE EDICTS AGAINST THE TRUTH: DIOCLETIAN. 

The Army: Maximian : Marcellus— Tenth Persecution: at Nicomedia — Churches and Books 
Destroyed— The Edict Torn Down— In the Palace : Through the World — Three More Edicts 
— Accounts of Phileas and Eusebius — Romanus and Others, ..... 157-174 

CHAPTER XI. 
THE LAST PAGAN PERSECUTION: GALERIUS AND MAXiniN. 

Condition of the Empire — Boldness of Martyrs— Legend of St. Dorothea — Galerius Proclaims Tol- 
eration : His Death — New Measures of Oppression- Defeat and Death of Maximin, . 175-186 

CHAPTER XII. 
THE AGES OF DOCTRINE. 

Edicts Against Heresy— Pagan "Worship Suppressed— Theology : Arianism— Julian the Apostate — 
Feeling Against Executions for Heresy— Arian Cruelties — Athamasius— The Dark Ages — 
Abelard— Arnold of Buscia— The Waldenses, ....... 187-199 

CHAPTER XIIT. 
THE ALBIGENSES. 

Origin, Beliefs, and Character of the Cathari- Their Persecutions— In Languedoc and Provence — 

Raymond VI. — Crusade Preached, ......... 200-210 

CHAPTER XIV. 
THE ALBIGENSIAN WARS. 

Sack of Beziers : " Kill Them All "— Montfort— Fate of Minerve— " Pilgrims : " Sheep and Wolves 
— First Siege of Toulouse — Pedro of Aragon— Battle of Muret — Raymond Deposed — Young 
Raymond: War Renewed -Second Siege of Toulouse— Death of Montfort— Massacre at 
Marmonde — Death of Raymond VI. — Crusade of Louis VIII. — Siege of Avignon — Submission 
of Raymond VII.— Speech of De Foix— Fate of Languedoc, ..... 211-232 

CHAPTER XV. 
WICLIF AND THE LOLLARDS. 

Teachings of Wiclif— Efforts Against Him— Boldness of His Disciples — Burning of Sawtrey and 

Badby — Lord Cobham— His Trial— Rising of the Lollards — Cobham Burned, . . 233-242 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER XVI. 
BOHEMIA AND JOHN HUSS. 

History of Bohemia— Early Reformers— Entrance of Wiclif's Doctrines — Huss— Wiclif's Books 
Burned— Huss Excommunicated— Council of Constance— The Safe-Conduct— Huss Goes to 
Constance : is Arrested, * . . . . . • . . . 243-254 

CHAPTER XVII. 
THE ITARTYRS OF CONSTANCE. 

Charges Against Huss— His Trial — His Execution— Indignation in Bohemia— Jerome of Prague — 

His Recantation — His Last Speech —His Death, ....... 255-268 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
TROUBLES IN BOHEHIA. 

Inquisitors Appointed — Calixtines and Taborites— Death of the King— Disturbances in Prague: 
Zisca— Sigismund Heir to the Throne— Crasa Executed — Crusade Proclaimed — Specimen 
Cruelties— Open Rebellion — First Invasion : Tabor Attacked— Horrors of the War — Siege of 
Prague— The Four Articles — Coronation and Retreat of Sigismund, .... 269-284 

CHAPTER XIX. 
ZISCA OF THE CUP. 

Second and Third Invasions — League of Cities — Zisca Blind — Fourth Invasion — Battle of Deutsch- 

brod — Disorder in Prague — Civil War— Zisca Before Prague— His Triumphs — tlis Death, 285-296 

CHAPTER XX. 
CRUSADES AND COUNCILS. 

Procopius— Two More Invasions— Negotiations — "Obsequies of Huss" — Last Crusade— Council 

of Basle -Bohemian Deputation — Dissensions— Death of Procopius, . . . 297-308 

CHAPTER XXI. 
INQUISITION AND REFORMATION. 

Rise of the Inquisition— In Spain — Tortures of the Victims — Suppression of Thought— Authority 
vs. Private Judgment— Toleration Among the Reformers— Luther — First Martyrs of the 
North— Tyndale, . .......... 309-320 

CHAPTER XXII. 
SMITHFIELD FIRES. 

England and Henry VIII. — Cranmer— Edward VI. — Mary— Trial of the Bishops— Burning of 
Rogers, Sanders, Hooper, and Taylor— Of Ridley and Latimer— Of Cranmer— Effect on the 
People — The Roll of Martyrs — Queen Elizabeth— Scotland : Hamilton : Wishart : Knox : 
Queen Mary, • • . • . 321-3 6 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
IN FRANCE. 
Early Reformers: a Hard Soil— Francis L— The Estrapades— Massacres in Provence— Henry II. : 
New Edict— Arrest of Du Bourg— Bourbons, Guises, and Chatillons —Francis II.— Du Bourg 
Burned— Rising of Amboise — Executions— Castelnau, ...... 337-352 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
WORDS AND BLOWS. 

Assembly of Notables— Plots of the Cardinal— Conde Sentenced— Death of Francis II.— Catherine 
de Medicis— Colloquy of Poissy— Edict of Toleration— Conference at Saverne— Massacre of 
Vassy— Anarchy and Bloodshed — Montluc and Des Adrets - Battle of Dreux— Siege of Rouen 
—Siege of Orleans— Death of Guise, . . . • - • • • 353-373 



io CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXV. 
THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 

Jeanne D'Albret— Henry— Second War: Battle of St. Denis -Third War: Battle of Jarnac : 
Death of Conde— Battle of Moncontour: of Auray-le-Duc,— Peace of St. Germain— Two 
Parties — Death of Jeanne, ....... - 374-333 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

ST. BARTHOLOHEW. 

Marriage of Henry— Charles IX. and Coligny— Coligny Wounded— The Plot— Murder of Coligny : 
The Massacre— In the Provinces— The News Abroad— Fourth War : Sieges of Rochelle and 
Sancerre— The "Politicals"— D'Alen^on's Plot— Death of Charles IX., . . . 386-404 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
THE THREE HENRIES. 

Condition of France— Henry III. — Fifth War : The League -Sixth and Seventh Wars — Taking of 
Cahors— Death of D'Alencon— Treaty of Nemours — Preparation for War — Navarre Excom- 
municated — Eighth War : Battle of Coutras — Aggressions of the League : Guise in Paris : 
Flight of the King — Second States of Blois— Assassination of Guise— Death of Catherine- 
Alliance of Henry and Navarre — Murder of Henry III , ..... 405-428 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
THE FOURTH HENRY. 

Weakness of the King — Battle of Arques— Battle of Ivry— Siege of Paris — Parma's Strategy — 

Siege of Rouen— Skirmish at Aumale, ... .... 429-44"> 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
ABJURATION. 

The Estates at Paris— Henry, Reconciled to the Church— Opposition of the Jesuits : The Pope's 
Absolution Refused— Coronation — The King Enters Paris : His Clemency— Trial of the 
Jesuits : Attempt on Henry's Life— War with Spain : Battle of Fontaine— The Pope Absolves 
Henry— Poverty and Financial Reforms— Amiens Lost and Retaken— Edict of Nantes— Peace 
ofVervins, ............ 444-4G0 

CHAPTER XXX. 
IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 

Charles V.— The Dutch Reformation— 50,000 Martyrs— The Emperor Abdicates— Philip II.— 

William of Orange— Sack of St. Quentin— Philip Departs— Autos da-fe in Spain, . . 461-473 

CHAPTER XXXI. 
ON THE WAY TO WAR. 

Granvelle : The Inquisition— Plain Words from Orange— General Excitement— The "Com- 
promise:" The "Request:" The "Beggars"— Field-Preachings— Image-Breaking— The 
"Accord"— The Regents Slanders— Orange Alone— Affairs of Lannoy, Watrelots and Ostra- 
well— Tumult at Antwerp— The New Oath— Siege of Valenciennes : Its Punishment- 
Emigration, . ....'. . . . . . . . . . 474-495 

CHAPTER XXXII. 
ALVA AND THE BLOOD=COUNCIL. 

Arrival of the Spaniards— Egmont and Horn Arrested— The New Council— Alva Viceroy — 
Orange Indicted: His Son Kidnapped— Murderous Decree of the Inquisition— Apology of 
Orange— The War Begins— Victory of the Holy Lion— Egmont and Horn Beheaded, . 496-508 



CONTENTS. ii 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
UPHILL WORK. 

Slaughter at Jemmingen— More Outrages— Campaign of Orange— Disaster at the Geta— Alva's 
Statue : His New Taxes— The "Act of Pardon "—Murder of Montigny -Exploit of De Ruyter 
— Activity of Orange — A Desperate Situation, ....... 5C9-521 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
REBELLION AND ITS PUNISHriENT. 

The Sea Beggars— They Take Brill— Outrages at Rotterdam— Revolt of Flushing— Risings in the 
North— The New Government -Capture of Mons : Its Siege— Estates of Holland Meet— 
Dsfeat of Genlis— Orange Takes Roermonde— His Progress Stopped by St. Bartholomew — His 
Narrow Escape— Surrender of Mons— Blood-Council at Mons— Sack of Mechlin— Horrors at 
Zutphen— Relief of Tergoes— Defections in the North— Destruction of Naarden - Siege of 
Harlem— Defeats of La Marck and Batenburg— Heroism of the Besieged— The Last Hope 
Fails— Fate of Harlem, . . ........ 522-5 f 5 

CHAPTER XXXV. 
ALKMAAR, HOOK AND LEYDEN. 

Siege of Alkmaar — Victory on the Zuyder Zee— Departure of Alva — Naval Victory at Bergen — 
Taking of Middleburg — Battle of Mook : Death of Louis— Mutiny of Spanish Troops— Naval 
Victory Near Antwerp— Siege of Leyden : Its Relief, .... . 5i6-5£9 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 
MUTINY AND MASSACRE. 

Negotiations and a Wedding— Seizure of Schouwen — Death of Requesens— Death of Boisot: Fall 
of Zierickzee— Edict Against Mutineers — Confusion— Defense of Antwerp — The Spanish 
Fury— Its Effects: Treaty of Ghent, . . . . . . . . 560-570 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
DON JOHN. 

Demands of the Estates— The Governor Consents — His Efforts to Win Orange— The Spaniards Go 
— Seizure of Namur— Attempt on Antwerp Citadel : Its Destruction — Orange at Brussels — The 
Nobles : Archduke Matthias— Rising at Ghent— Preparations for War— Disaster at Gemblours 
— Amsterdam Won and Purged— A Barren Campaign — Death of Don John, . . 571-586 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
HARD TIMES. 

The Prince of Parma — General Confusion — Bribery : Loss of the South — Treason of Egmont — 
Siege of Maestricht : Its Heroic Defense : The Massacre— Slanders on Orange — Troubles at 
Ghent— Great Offers to the Prince— Congress at Cologne— Treason of De Bours and Renne- 
berg— Siege of Groningen — Defeat of Coewerden — Departure of Count John — Orange Under 
the Ban— Siege and Relief of Steenwyk — Death of Renneberg, .... 587-603 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 
INDEPENDENCE. 

Romish Worship Suppressed — Act of Abjuration— A Man Who Would not be King — Alengon as 
a Candidate : as Sovereign — Orange Dangerously Wounded by an Assassin — Death of the 
Princess— Parma's Activity, ...... ... 604-613 

CHAPTER XL. 
A KNAVE AND A MARTYR. 

Alencon's Plot — French Fury at Antwerp — An Awkward Situation— Orange Refuses the Throne 
— Successes of Parma— Intrigues at Ghent — Murder of Orange— His Character — The Later 
Wars, ............. 611-625 



12 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XLI. 
THE INVINCIBLE ARHADA. 

England and Spain — Preparations for Invasion — The Fight in the Channel : Off the Flemish 

Coast— The Storm— The Results, . . . . . . . . 626-635 

CHAPTER XLII. 
THE PURITANS. 

Under Elizabeth— James I. — Theory of Divine Right— Charles I. — Land and Wentworth— A Per- 
secuting Church — In Scotland : " The Bishops' War " — The Long Parliament, . . 636-648 

CHAPTER XLIII. 
THE REVOLUTION. 

Cavaliers and Roundheads — Attempt to Arrest the Five Members — A View of Both Sides— Civil 
War— England Adopts the Covenant— Cromwell and the Ironsides— Marston Moor — The 
Self-denying Ordinance — Naseby — Execution of the King— Cromwell as Protector — The Res- 
toration — The Covenanters —James II. : His Tyranny and Expulsion, . . . 649-664 

CONCLUSION. 

Conclusion, ....... ...... 665-669 



IXJL'UmSMATWD PErATB 



^(E» 



v Foundation of Christianity Frontispiece 

v Christians in the Arena Page 72 

^Angels Calling the World to Worship " 184 

/Martyrdom of John Huss " 264 

vThe Virgin Martyr " 376 

v Faithful Unto Death " 456 

/The Guardian Angel " 536 

. Through Earthly Storms to Heavenly Rest " 616 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 

Vision of Army in the Heavens 6 

The Holy of Holies iS 

Hebrew Slaves in Asia 20 

God's Judgment on Heliodorus 21 

Murder of Onias the High Priest 23 

Massacre of Women and Children in Jerusalem. . 24 

Antiochus 25 

Jews Made Captive 26 

Antiochus and His Army Spoiling the Temple 27 

Antiochus as a Persecutor 29 

The Mother of the Maccabees and Her Youngest 

Son 30 

Flight of Refugees to the Mountains 32 

Mattathias Slays the Apostate 33 

Mattathias Exhorting His Followers to Defend 

Their Faith 35 

Ptolemy 36 

Judas Assembling His Warriors 38 

Lysias 39 

Judas Restores the Temple 40 

Fall of Antiochus 42 

An Angel of the Lord Leads the Israelites Against 

the Enemy 44 

Judas Before the Army of Lysias 45 

Burning of Jamnia 47 

The Elephants in War 49 

Judas Pursues His Enemies 50 

And They Would Not Offer Resistance on the 

Sabbath Day 52 

Suffocation of Menelaus 55 

Sixty Jewish Rulers Slain by Bacchides 57 

The Vision of Judas — Jeremiah and the Golden 

Sword 58 

Judas Last Battl e 60 

Early Christian Teaching 62 



Page 

Demetrius 63 

St. Peter 65 

Roman Court in Early Times 67 

Ruins of the Interior of the Roman Forum 69 

St. Paul 70 

St. Matthew 71 

St. John 72 

Ruins of Domitian's Palace 73 

St. James The Less 75 

St. Bartholomew 76 

Emperor Domitian 77 

Trajan 79 

Forum of Trajan 80 

Ruins of Antioch 81 

Over the Battlements S2 

Gate of St. Paul 84 

Arch of Titus 85 

Scourging a Christian 87 

Street Scene in Antioch 88 

la the Catacomb of St. Agnes 89 

Onesimus, for Whom St. Paul Pleaded, Taken to 

Rome and Stoned 91 

Underground Passage in Roman Palace 92 

And They Loved Their God Better Than Liberty. 94 

Subterranean Altar of St. Agnes 95 

And Because of Their Faith They Were Thrown 

into the Arena 97 

Temple of Minerva 99 

Polycarp's Prayer 100 

A Christian Sentenced to Death io 2 

Xjridge of Nomentano 103 

Felicitas and Her Seven Sons 105 

In the Amphitheatre 108 

Staircase in the Palace of Caligula 109 

Ruins of the Coliseum in 

(13) 



14 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 

Fountain of Egeria 113 

Ancient Armor 115 

Christians Attacked by a Mob 116 

Elegabalus 11S 

Nero 119 

Septimus Severus 121 

Ruins of Casino, Minerva 122 

The Arrest of Perpetua 123 

The Martyr's Dream 124 

Caracalla 125 

Roman Shields 127 

Street Scene in Asia Minor 128 

Archway on Mount Sinai 129 

Marcus Aurelius 130 

Martyrdom of Metras 132 

Serapion Assailed and Killed in His Own House.. 134 

Remains of the Temple at Abydos 135 

Besar, the Soldier, Loses His Life Trying to Pro- 
tect the Christians from the Mob 137 

The Ibis, the Sacred Bird of the Egyptians 139 

Prostrate Colossal Statue of Pharaoh 140 

Outer Mummy Case of Queen Ne-fert Ari 141 

An Egyptian Woman 144 

An Alexandrian Donkey Boy 145 

A Street View in Cairo 147 

Tombs of Campagna 148 

Lattice Window in Alexandria 150 

The Collossi of Thebes 151 

Great Hall in the Temple of Abydos 152 

Gallineus 153 

Scene Near St. Sabastian's Gate 155 

The Nile 156 

Diocletian 158 

Cobbler Installed in a Ruined Palace 159 

Baths of Caracalla 160 

Church of St. Trophimus, a Companion of St. 

Paul 161 

The Martyr's Faith 162 

The Prefect with His Followers Destroying the 

Principal Church of Nicomedia 163 

Tomb of Hadrian 165 

Gates at Nicea (now Isnik) in Bithynia 167 

Interior View of Catacombs 169 

Ancient Burying Palace of Rome 170 

A Cairene Woman 172 

Triumphal Arch of San Gallo 173 

Decius 174 

Remains of a Roman Aqueduct 176 

Ruins of Temple of Minerva 177 

Theatre of Marcellus, Rome .- , 179 

A Roman Fresco 180 

Gate of Agora 182 

Columns of Temple at Lexor 184 

Arch of Constantiue 188 

Julian 189 

Basilica of Constantine 191 



Page 

Constantius II 192 

Medal of Theodoras , 193 

Death of Julian, the Apostate 195 

Burning of a Heretic 197 

Valley of Angrogua 198 

The First Crusaders on Their Way to the Holy 

Land, Destroying the City of Pelagonia 201 

Arnold of Brescia, Preaching in His Native Town 203 

Brescia 205 

Crusaders Crossing the Mountains 206 

Persecution of Albigenses 207 

Penance of Raymond 208 

The Old Fortress Town of Carcassonne 209 

The Attack on Beziers 212 

Vernet in the Eastern Pyrenees 2 r3 

The Crusaders Enter Minerve Singing the Te 

Deum 215 

Toulouse 217 

Attack on Toulouse Repulsed 2 r9 

Avignon 221 

Albigensian Worshippers on the Banks of the 

Rhone 222 

Ancient War Machinery 224 

Death of Montfort at Siege of Toulouse 227 

Siege of Avignon 229 

Massacre of the Vaudois 23 1 

Wiclif 234 

Wiclif and the Monks 236 

Wiclif 's Church 238 

John of Gaunt Defending Wiclif Before the Bishop 

of Lodi 240 

Crouch Oak, Addlestone, Under Which Wiclif 

Preached , 241 

Chamber in Lollard's Tower, Lambeth Place, 

Where the Reformers were Confined 244 

Trial of Wiclif in the Black Friars' Monastery, 

London 246 

The Lollard's Tower, Lambeth Place 247 

Cobham's Escape 248 

John Huss 250 

Burning of Wiclif 's Works at Prague 251 

Lutterworth Church 254 

Bishop of Lodi Preaching at the Condemnation of 

Huss 256 

View of Constance 258 

Stones of Carnac 260 

Trial of Huss — Degrading the Martyr 261 

Jerome of Prague 263 

Jerome Speaking at His Trial 265 

Jerome on the Way to Execution 266 

Fac-simile of a Part of Wiclif 's Bible 269 

Tower of Bridge of Prague, to Which the Heads 

of Martyrs Were Affixed 271 

Outrage of Prague 272 

Taborites Selecting a Pastor 274 

Taborites Worshioping in a Cave 276 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



1 5 



Page 
Bohemian Women Fighting from Their Baggage 

Wagons , 278 

A Group of Mendicant Friars 281 

Preaching the Crusade 283 

Peasant with Her Water Jug 287 

Sigismund's Army on the Way to Prague 288 

After the Battle of Deutschbrod 290 

View of Rome 292 

Wayside Preaching in the Time of Huss 293 

Celebration of the Lord's Supper by the Hussites 

in a Field near Prague 295 

Procipius, the Great Hussite General 298 

Crusaders on the Way to Bohemia 299 

Soldiers Searching for Bohemian Protestants 301 

Hussite Shield 303 

Arrival of Hussite Deputies at Basle 304 

Crusaders Perishing for Lack of Water 3l6 

Seal of Council of Basle 307 

Lyons 308 

Aticient Leather Cannon 310 

Gate of the Castle of Penhade Cintha 311 

Penitents Receiving Absolution 313 

The Inquisition in Session 315 

Martin Luther 317 

Catherine Von Bora, Wife of Luther 318 

Luther's Cell, Erfurt 319 

House in which Luther Lived 320 

Thomas Bilney on His Way to the Stake 323 

William Tyndale 324 

Cathedral of Worms 326 

Latimer Exhorting Ridley at the Stake 328 

Archbishop Cranmer 331 

Queen Elizabeth 332 

Catherine Discussing Theology with Henry VIII. 333 
Parting of Patrick Hamilton from His Friends. .. 335 

Hugenot Peasant at Home 338 

Francis I 339 

Tortrait of Calvin . . . . , 341 

Henry II 342 

Catherine De Medicis in Youth 343 

Burning of Protestants in Paris 344 

Conde 



A Lady of Ambeise 

The Chateau of Amboise 

The Hangings at Amboise 

Mary Stuart 

Rock of Caylus, an Old Huguenot Fortress 

Shepherd Girl of the Pyrenees 

Coligny at the Death Bed of Francis II 

Mount St. Michael 

Huguenots Destroying the Images 

Christopher, Duke of Wurtemburg, Expounding 
the Lutheran Doctrine to the Duke of Guise 
and Cardinal Lorraine 

Chateau D' Arques 

Montluc Slaying Prisoners at St. Mezard 



346 

347 
349 
35i 
352 
354 
356 
357 
359 
361 



364 
366 

368 



Page 

Burying the Dead After the Battle of Dreux 370 

The Night Before the Siege of Rouen 372 

Preparing for the Siege of Orleans 375 

Assassination of Guise, by Jean Peltrot 377 

Death of Conde 379 

The Queen of Navarre Encouraging Her Troops . . 381 

Battle of Moncoutour 383 

Chamber of Horrors, Time of the Inquisition 385 

Cardinal of Lorraine 387 

Attack on Coligny 's House 388 

Assassination of Coligny 390 

A Nobleman Seeking Refuge in Queen Margaret's 

Chamber 393 

The Duke of Guise Viewing the Body of Coligny. 395 
The Night of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew . . 397 
Cardinal Lorraine Receiving the Head of Coligny 399 

Visions of a Guilty King 401 

Charles IX. and His Mother 402 

St. Bartholomew Medals 406 

Henry III 408 

The Louvre 409 

Duke of Guise 411 

Montmorency 414 

Sully 415 

Navarre at the Battle of Coutras 417 

Guise Attacking the Germans and Swiss on Their 

Way to Join Navarre 416 

Woodman's Cabin in the Ardeune Forest 421 

Murder of Duke of Guise 424 

Death of Henry III 427 

Battle of Arques .• 43 r 

Battle of Ivry 434 

Henry IV. at Ivry 437 

The Prince of Parma 439 

Maria De Medicis 441 

Henry IV 443 

Beauva's Cathedral 446 

Rochelle, Once the Stronghold of French Protes- 
tantism 449 

Entrance of Henry IV. Into Paris 45 1 

Mount Pelvoux 452 

Charlamagne 455 

View of Nantes Where the Famous Edict was Is- 
sued by Henry IV. in 1598, for Nearly a Century 

the Charter of Huguenot Freedom 458 

French Soldiers 460 

Charles V 463 

Town Hall, Veere 466 

Emperor Charles V. Resigning the Crown 468 

Protestants Driven from Their Homes Take up 

Their Abode in the Mountains 470 

Clement Marot 472 

Instruments of Torture from the Tower of London 473 

Blois with Castle 475 

Fountain in the Park of La Teto Do 477 

A Field Preaching Scene Near Ghent , 480 



i6 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Page 

Destroying Images and Altars 483 

The Town Hall, Hague 484 

William the Silent Prince of Orange 487 

Oriental Bishops with Long Beards 489 

The Red Gate, Antwerp 490 

After the Fall of Valenciennes 492 

Castle of St. Angelo, Rome 493 

Entrance to Hall of Knights 495 

Duke of Alva 497 

The Dunes on North Sea Coast, Near the Hague. 499 

Rear Facade of the Flesher' sHall 501 

Costumes of Holland Women '. 503 

Dutch Children in Their Working Dress 505 

Death of Egmont 507 

The Burgomaster's Room in Antwerp 511 

Tower of Joan of Arc, Rouen. .. .• 513 

Alva and His Army Entering Brussels 514 

At the Door of a House in the Island of Marken.. 516 

Crossing to Marken 5 8 

Town Hall, Kampen 520 

Fight between Spanish Fleet and the Ships of the 

Sea Beggars 524 

A Quay in Rotterdam 526 

Flushing 527 

View of Utrecht, in Holland 52,9 

Genlis and His Army Attacked by the Spaniards 

Near Mons 531 

Dutch Protestants Worshipping in Caves 533 

The Town Hall, Harlem 535 

Entrance to the Zuy der Zee 538 

Harlem . . 541 

Dress of Zealand Women 543 

Organ in the Great Church, Harlem 544 

The Weigh House, Alkmaar 547 

Alva's Fast Ride Through Amsterdam 549 

Interior of a House in Alkmaar. 551 

Battle of Mook 553 

North Holland Dykes 556 

Monument at Alkmaar 558 

Town Hall, Leyden 561 

Senate Chamber, University of Feyden 562 

A Canal in Feyden 564 



Page 

The University of Feyden . 566 

The Water Gate 567 

The Great Tower Zierick^ee 569 

A Dutch Officer 570 

A Woman of Holland with Gold Head-dress 573 

Zealand Jewelry 574 

In the Jews' Quarter, Amstt dam 577 

St. Anthony's Weigh House, Amsterdam 5S0 

The Slaughter of the State's 1 orces at Gembours. 582 
Children of the Protestant Orphanage in Amster- 
dam, Their Dress Being H. If Red and Half 

Black. 585 

Pulpit in New Church, Amsterdam 589 

Montalbau 's Tower, Amsterdam 591 

The Night Before the Taking of Maestricht .... 594 

Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma 597 

A Dutch Fisherman at an Unfamiliar Task 600 

A Fisherman's Child 603 

A Street Scene in Amsterdam 606 

Dutch Courtship on the Isle of Welcheren 609 

Jan Six Burgomaster of Amsterdam 611 

Prince Maurice, of Nassau 616 

First Wife of Rembrandt, the Great Dutch Painter 618 

Death of William the Silent 620 

Statute of William the Silent, at the Hague 623 

William the Silent and His Wife 62S 

English Fireships Sent Into the Armada 631 

Fands End . 633 

Beachy Head 634 

Fady Jane Grey 637 

Elizabeth's Tomb, Westminster Abbey 639 

High Street, Oxford 641 

The Martyr's Memorial, Oxford 643 

Glastonbury Abbey 646 

Windsor Castle 65 1 

Feicester Hospital, Warwick 654 

Old House in Castle Street, Warwick 657 

Magna Charter Island, Where the Great Charter of 

English Liberty was Signed 660 

Covenantors Worshipping by the Banks of the 
Whitadder 663 





CHAPTER I. 



ANTIOCHUS THE PERSECUTOR. 



HE Jews were our forerunners. Their sacred 
books make the greater part of our Bible. 
Their history must always be of interest to 
Christians. Their lawgivers and prophets 
were the early mediums of divine revelation. 
They were the world's instructors in religion 
and morals ; through them humanity was 
prepared for its Messiah. 

They were a fierce, proud, stubborn race, 
often unworthy of their privileges ; but they 
were the Lord's peculiar people. Of their 
wars of conquest, their many vicissitudes, their exile in Babylon, their final 
ruin and dispersion, we have nothing here to say ; but one era of their later 
experience affords a fitting introduction to the history of Christian sufferings 
and contests. The persecution by Antiochus and the noble rising of the Mac- 
cabees have served as precedent and model for many deeds of Christian heroism. 
Our Lord, His apostles, and their first converts were Jews. In the Church of 
the first centuries, the Hebrew element had a large and important part. When 
the followers of Jesus were called to "resist unto blood, striving against sin," the 
memory of ancestral martyrs and confessors supplied incentive and inspiration. 
Harassed by cruel enemies, summoned under Nero or Decius to deny Christ or 
die, they found strength and comfort in looking back to the long line of those 
who had struck or suffered for what they knew of truth. So in later ages: the 
Albigenses of Lauguedoc, the Hussites of Bohemia, the Vaudois of the Alps, 
the Calvinists of Holland, the Huguenots of France, the Puritans of Eng- 
land, the Covenanters of Scotland, were sustained in suffering by the remembrance 
of those who had suffered long before, and found encouragement to take up the 
sword in the examples of those who had fought valiantly for Jewish faith and 
freedom. In Israel or Christendom alike, it was one cause, one fellowship, 
one brotherhood of service and endurance. For aid against the powers of this 
world when these are on Satan's side, the Epistle to the Hebrews summons "a 
great cloud of witnesses " from the very beginning of human life on earth. 

(17) 



i8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Its eloquent list ends with the citation of nameless heroes and heroines "who 
through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of 

. the sword, out 




of weakness 
were made 
strong,waxed 
valiant in 
fight, turned 
to flight the 
armies of the 
ali 



ens: 



and 
of others 
whose suc- 
cess, less 
plainly visi- 
ble here, won 
equal ap- 
plause in 
heaven; who 
"had trial of 
cruel mock- 
ings and 
scourgings, 
yea, moreover 
of bonds and imprisonment; they 
were stoned, they were sawn asun- 
der, were tempted, were slain with 
the sword ; they wandered about in 
sheepskins and goatskins, being 
destitute, afflicted, tormented (of 
whom 'the world was not worthy) ; 
they wandered in deserts, and in 
mountains, and in dens and caves 
of tbe earth." 

Of this record, at once historic 
and prophetic, "looking before and 
after," illustrations are well-nigh 
innumerable. In collecting some of them, it would be unfair wholly to pass by 
the Jewish heroes of the second pre-Christian century. 



THE HOLY OF HOLIES. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 19 

PTOLEMY'S SACRILEGE. 

On the division of the immense empire of Alexander the Greats Judea was 
annexed to the Greek kingdom of Egypt, though much nearer that of Syria. For 
near a century this connection produced no discontent, the Jews being really gov- 
erned by their high priest, who sent an annual tribute to Egypt. But in 22 1 B. C. 
Ptolemy IV. (called in irony Philopator, or Father-lover) reached the throne by the 
murder of his father : his character and conduct in general were of a piece with 
this commencement. A few years later, having defeated Antiochus of Syria at 
Raphia, near Gath, he visited Jerusalem, and, being admitted to the court of the 
Gentiles, insisted on going further. An early record says that, " wondering at 
the good order about the holy place, he formed a design to enter the temple itself, 
even the Holy of Holies. But when they said that this could not be done, since 
it was not lawful for even the Jews to enter there, no, nor for the priests them- 
selves, but only for the high priest, and for him but once a year ; still he would 
by no means be dissuaded." His profane insistence caused a terrible commotion. 
People came running from all parts of the city: "The virgins also, who were 
shut up in private chambers, rushed out with their mothers, sprinkled ashes and 
dust on their heads, and filled the streets with groans and lamentations. Brides, 
leaving their marriage-vows and that decent modesty which belonged to them, ran 
about the city in disorder. Mothers and nurses left their charges and went in 
troops to the temple." The bolder citizens wished to prevent the sacrilege by 
violence, and were with difficulty restrained from so rash an attempt. 

The priests were praying, the people crying and wailing, till it seemed that 
"the very walls and the ground echoed again; as if the whole multitude chose 
rather to die than see their holy place profaned." 

The tyrant, after the manner of his kind, cared more for his whim than 
for the public feeling or the divine law. But as he moved to enter the sacred 
building, he was smitten by superstitious terror or by a Hand stronger than 
that of man. The Third Book of Maccabees says that " God chastised him, 
shaking him this way and that, as a reed is shaken by the wind; so that he 
lay upon the floor powerless and paralyzed in his limbs, and unable to speak, 
being overtaken by a just judgment." 

Being carried out, he presently recovered, no worse in body for his adven- 
ture, and certainly no better in mind. Disgusted or enraged at his repulse, he 
left the holy city, muttering curses against all Jews, but fearing to institute 
further experiments in Judea. Arrived at home, his malice found vent in a 
petty persecution of the Alexandrian Hebrews, whom he excluded from the 
palace, reduced to the lowest rank, and branded with an ivy leaf, the emblem 
of Bacchus, his favorite deity. Of many thousand Jewish citizens, but three 
hundred were thus prevailed on to renounce their faith, and these apostates 
were despised and shunned by their former friends. Angered by this resistance 







HEBREW SLAVES IN ASIA, 



(2D) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



21 



to his will, the king had Jews by thousands dragged in chains from all parts 
of Egypt and shut up in the hippodrome, where his elephants were to be let 
loose upon them. For two days his drunken revels or changing fancies delayed 
the execution of this project, and when it was attempted, the elephants, being too 
highly primed for their work, turned on their keepers and on the pagan crowd. 
A bloody rebellion followed, in which forty thousand Jews lost their lives. 

PUNISHMENT OF HELIODORUS. 

The brief visit of Philopator to Jerusalem had serious results. Previously 
undisturbed in the exercise of their religion, the Jews bitterly resented that 
monarch's attempted sacrilege, and awaited an opportunity to transfer their 
allegiance from 
Egypt to Syria. 
They aided Anti- 
ochus in a war 
with Ptolemy V., 
and after his vic- 
tory at Mount 
Panius, B.C. 198, 
welcomed the ex- 
change of mas- 
ters. The king, 
on his part, made 
fair promises for 
the protection of 
the temple, and 
liberal grants for 
its maintenance. 
These favors 
were renewed for 
a time by his son 
Seleucus, till 
roval covetous- god - s judgment on heuodorus. 

ness, prompted by domestic treason, brought in confusion and strife in place of 
harmony. Simon, governor of the temple, having quarrelled with Onias, the 
high priest, hinted to the king that the treasures of which he was guardian might 
pay the tribute to Rome and relieve any stringency at Antioch. Seleucus there- 
upon (B. C. 177) sent his treasurer, Heliodorus, to seize the wealth of the temple. 
And now the scenes of forty years before were re-enacted ; the popular excitement, 
the wailing, the agonized prayers for help, the futile effort at resistance, and the 
strange result. " There appeared a horse with a terrible rider, adorned with a 




22 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

very fair covering, and he ran fiercely and smote at Heliodorus with his fore- 
feet ; and it seemed that he that sat upon the horse had complete harness of 
gold. Moreover, two other young men (/. e,, angels) appeared before him, nota- 
ble in strength, excellent in beaut}'', and comely in apparel, who stood by him 
on either side and scourged him continually, and gave him many sore stripes. 
And Heliodorus fell suddenly to the ground and was compassed with great 
darkness." Restored by the prayers of Onias, he made haste back to Antioch, 
and told the king, "If thou hast any enemy or traitor, send him thither, and 
thou shalt receive him well scourged, if he escape with his life; for in that place, 
beyond doubt, is an especial power of God." Within a year he murdered his 
master and was destroyed by the next king, Antiochus IV., called Epiphanes, or 
the Illustrious. 

The Jews ascribed these deaths to the divine vengeance upon sacrilege, 
and hoped for good days which they were not soon to see. Internal dissen- 
sions plajred into the hands of royal policy and rapacity. Simon, the disturber, 
was indeed banished, to die abroad ; but the good Onias had three rascally 
brothers, who sought to rise by his fall. These aped Greek manners, assumed 
Greek names, and were willing to sacrifice the national faith, cause, and character, 
no less tha.n natural affection, to their selfish ambition. Joshua or Jason, by a 
bribe, procured his brother's exile to Antioch, and his own succession to the 
high priest's office. After three years he was driven to the land of Ainmon, 
and his place taken, through the same arts, by a younger brother, Menelaus, 
who had gone over openly to heathenism. He sold some of the consecrated 
vessels of the temple, through a fourth brother, Lysimachus, who was presently 
slain in the treasury by his indignant fellow-citizens. He procured the murder, 
first of Onias, the legitimate high priest, who had denounced this sacrilegious 
theft and then taken refuge in the famous (or infamous) sanctuary of Daphne, 
near Antioch ; and then of three deputies who had been sent from Jerusalem 
to testify of his crimes. 

Great and general was the wrath aroused by these vile deeds and hideous 
scandals. But Menelaus was firm in the favor of Epiphanes, who, through 
drink and the reckless exercise of arbitrary power had become almost a mad- 
man. On a false report of the king's death in Egypt, Jason attacked Jerusalem, 
killed many, and won a temporary success ; but he was presently forced to fly, 
and after various wanderings, died in poverty so far from home as Sparta in 
Greece. 

WICKEDNESS OF ANTIOCHUS. 

Antiochns was enraged by exaggerated accounts of Jason's raid, and of 
rejoicings among the Jews on hearing of his death. So "when this that was 
done came to the king's ear, he thought that Judea had revolted; whereupon, 
removing out of Egypt in a ferocious mind, he took the city by force of arms, and 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY 



23 



commanded his men of war not to spare such as they met, and to slay such as 
went up upon the houses. Thus there was killing of young and old, making 
away of men, women and children, slaying of virgins and infants. And there 
were destroyed, within the space of three days, fourscore thousand, whereof forty 
thousand were slain in the conflict; and no fewer sold than slain." 

Such massacres were com- 
mon in those days, as under 
the Roman Emperors, and 
long after. The presence of 
the monarch was somelimes as 
destructive as that of a hostile 
army; he would enter a ci'yin 
peace, and on the spur of some 
malignant whim pour out the 
blood of his unoffending sub- 
jects as if it were water. Ty- 
rants were irresponsible, and 
life was cheap. Hnmanity is 
the la-t virtue that men have 
learned. Our modern notions 
of it are the result of long ages 
of Christian teaching, slowly 
appreciated, as the doctrines 
of the gospel gradually over- 
came the hardness of men's 
hearts and the dullness of 
their minds. 

To wholesale cruelty 
Epiphanes added wholesale 
impiety; he had broken all 
bounds now. The ancient 
chronicler goes on: 

"Yet was he not content 
with this, but presumed to go 
into the most holy temple of 
all the world, Menelaus, that traitor to the laws and to his own county, heing 
his guide; and taking the holy vessels with polluted hinds, and profanely pulling 
down the things dedicated by other kings to the increased honor and glory of the 
place, he took them away." 

This time no divine apparition, no access of sudden terror, hindered the 
despoiler. The chronicler is evidently perplexed to cxpliin the failure of the 




MURDER OP ONIAS, THE HTCH PRIEST. 







flR " - --- - - 1mm 

fllf 




Ifcu ■ • jji* '' lip I "fl 




MASSACRE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN JERUSALEM. 



(24) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



25 



Most High to prevent this horrible sacrilege and protect His own. He manages 
it thus : 

" So haughty was Antiochus in mind, he considered not that the Lord was 
angry for awhile for the sins of them that dwelt in the city, therefore His eye 
was not upon the place. For had they not been wrapped in many sins, this man, 
as soon as he had come, had forthwith been scourged, and put back from his pre- 
sumption, as Heliodorus was. Nevertheless, God did not choose the people for 
the place's sake, but the place for the people's sake ; and therefore the place itself 
was partaker with them of the adversity that happened to the nation." 

The spoil of the temple, according to the Second Book of Maccabees (v. 
21), amounted to near two million dollars — a sum worth ten times as much now. 
Much of this belonged to widows and orphans, and to other private persons ; for 
everywhere in the East the temples were then used as banks of deposit, the safest 
places where valuables could be stored, and not very safe at that. " So when 
Antiochus had cafried out of the temple a 
thousand and eight hundred talents, he de- 
parted in haste unto Antiochia, weening in his 
pride to make the land navigable, and the sea 
passable by foot ; such was the haughtiness 
of his mind." 

Dr. Raphall, author of the valuable " Post- 
Biblical History of the Jews," thinks that the 
crimes of Epiphanes were not due simply to 
frenzy or covetousness, but in part to a settled 
policy. His kingdom included a hodgepodge 
of tribes and races — Greeks as rulers and 
recent colonists, with Canaanites, Assyrians, 
and what not, native to the soil or settled there antiochus. 

for centuries. All these he aimed to fuse into one nationality, with (as near as 
might be) uniform laws, beliefs, and customs. In this huge undertaking he had 
the advice of an astute though unprincipled politician, Plotemy Macron, who 
served him as a sort of prime minister. In those days, as too long after, policy 
was ruthless, and an end in view was held to justify any means in the way of 
slaughter and destruction. Most of the people under Antiochus' yoke, being 
pagans, would exchange one form of idolatry for another without much compunc- 
tion. But the Jews were of a different temper. Narrow, exclusive, separate from 
the nations around, despising Gentiles as worshippers of false gods, they were 
generally accounted enemies of mankind. Some among them, like Jason and 
Menelaus, had been corrupted by foreign manners, and were really apostates; 
but the true Jew cared more for his faith and his nationality than for everything 
else in life. Epiphanes hated them because he had wronged them ; because he 




26 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



knew they hated him, and with reason ; because he saw they would not easily be 
bent to his will, and were thus the chief obstacles to his plan of unifying his 
domains. Resolutely to oppose an absolute monarch is to be in his view a traitor, 
a heretic, a blasphemer, a monster of iniquity, an offense to be wiped off the 
earth. These mingled motives, in a mind half crazed with constant debauches 
and with the conceit of empire, will account for the furious and frightful persecu- 
tions on which Antiochus now entered. 

The holy city and its inhabitants might hope in vain for a respite from woes 
that were but just begun. An event with which they had nothing to do inflamed 
their foe against them. The king had for years maintained a desultory war 
against Egypt; he was now (168 B. C.) besieging Alexandria, when an embassy 
arrived from Rome. Its leader, Popilius, who had been his friend in former 

years, disdained 
his offered em- 
brace, and hand- 
ed him a tablet 
inscribed, "An- 
tiochus, you will 
stop making war 
on the Ptole- 
mies." Cut to 
the soul, he said, 
"I will take coun- 
sel on this, and 
give you my de- 
cision." " No," 
replied the Ro- 
man, and with 
his cane he drew 
a circle in the 
sand around the 
king. "You will 
give me your 
jews made captives. answer now, be- 

fore you cross this line." Here was a foe he could not grapple with; swallowing 
his rage, he bowed his haughty head, and said, "I will obey the Senate." 




PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 

Baffled and humiliated, his fury had to find a vent, and Jerusalem lay in his 
path. It was in the power of Philip, a Phrygian, " for manners more barbarous 
than he that set him there," and of the detested Menelaus, " who, worse than all 




ANTIOCHUS AND HIS ARMY SPOILING THE TEMPLE. 
(27) 



38 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

the rest, bore a heavy hand over the citizens, having a malicious mind against his 
countrymen." Marching back from Egypt, the king detached Apollonius, the 
collector of tribute, " with an army of two and twenty thousand, commanding him 
to slay all them that were in their best age, and to sell the women and the 
younger sort ; who, coming to Jerusalem and pretending peace, did forbear till the 
Sabbath, when, taking the Jews keeping holy day, he slew all them that were 
gone to the services, and, running through the city with weapons, slew great 
multitudes." The city wall was broken down, the houses pillaged, and many of 
them destroyed to strengthen the citadel, which commanded the temple. Mene- 
laus would no longer conduct the services ; the daily sacrifices ceased in June, 
B. C. 167. The priests and other survivors left the ruined city to its garrison, 
and to those who had adopted the views and worship of the tyrant. 

A decree was now issued that throughout the kingdom of Syria all should 
worship the gods of Antiochus, and no others. The exercise of the Jewish 
religion was thus prohibited ; circumcision, the reading of the law, and the ob- 
servance of the Sabbath became punishable with death ; books of the law, when 
found, were torn or burned. One Atheneus was sent to Jerusalem and put 
in charge of the temple, which he dedicated to Jupiter Olympus. A heathen 
altar ("the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Jeremy the Prophet"), was 
erected in the sanctuary in November, 167 B. C, and profane sacrifices offered 
there and in every other city. The Bacchanalia took the place of the feast of 
the Tabernacles, and a monthly festival was instituted, at which the citizens 
were compelled to sacrifice to the idols and to eat pork, a meat forbidden by 
Moses and abhorred as unclean. 

Overseers and soldiers went throughout the kingdom to enforce the new 
decree. The Samaritans complied willingly enough, and so did the renegade 
or Hellenizing Jews, the party of Menelaus. Some submitted with reluctance, 
to save their lives. " Howbeit many in Israel were fully resolved and confirmed 
in themselves not to eat any unclean thing ; wherefore they chose rather to die, 
that they might not be defiled with meats, nor profane the holy covenant ; so 
then they died." Two women, who had privately circumcised their infants, 
were thrown from the battlements of the temple, -and others that had gone 
into caves near by, to keep the Sabbath, were all burned together, "because they 
made a conscience to act for the honor of the most sacred day." 

Antiochus, offended at so much obstinacy, came to Jerusalem, that the 
terrors of his presence might overawe rebellion. In person he presided at the 
executions, seeming, like later tyrants, to enjoy the torments of the martyrs. 
Eleazar, a man of position and character, in his ninetieth year, refusing to 
swallow the forbidden food, the. officers proposed to substitute meat lawful for 
Trim to eat, so that at once the appearance of submission might be preserved and 
his life. But he refused, saying that it became not his age to dissemble, nor 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



29' 



to set an example of hypocrisy and cowardice to the young, and so went cheer- 
fully to the scourging, crying out in his last moments that though enduring 
sore pain in body, in soul he was well content to suffer, because he feared God. 

THE MOTHER'S SACRIFICE OF SEVEN SONS. 

More memorable yet is the case of the seven brothers who, with their 
mother, were brought before the tyrant. "What wouldst thou ask or learn of 




ANTIOCHUS AS A PERSECUTOR. 



us?" said the eldest. "We are ready to die rather than to transgress the laws 
of our fathers." Each in turn spoke noble words, defying the tempter, and 
endured frightful torments with constancy. Through it all the mother stood 
by, exhorting each : "I cannot tell how ye came into my womb ; I neither 
gave you breath nor life, nor formed your members. But doubtless the Creator- 



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^ 11 

ifw»# ■"IIP 
1 



THE MOTHER OF THE MACCABEES AND HER YOUNGEST SON. 



(30) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 3 1 

will of His own mercy give you breath and life again, as ye now for His 
laws' sake regard not yourselves." When six were dead, the king, in his 
character of grand inquisitor, offered the youngest wealth and favor and office 
if he would conform, and begged the mother (whose speech was in her native 
tongue) , to urge his acceptance and save his life. But her counsel was this : 
" Oh my son, have pity upon me that bare thee in my womb, and gave thee 
suck, and nourished thee, and brought thee up to this age ! Look upon the 
heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made 
them of things that were not ; and likewise He made mankind. Fear not this 
tormentor, but be worthy of thy brothers and take thy death, that in His mercy ( 
I may receive thee with them again." On this the boy, scarce waiting for her 
to cease, cried : " I will not obey the king's commandment, but the law given 
to our fathers by Moses." More he said, denouncing retribution on the perse- 
cutor, and perished in tortures like the rest. The record closes : "So this 
man died undefiled, and put his whole trust in the Lord. Last of all, after 
the sons, the mother died." Another narrative, of less authority, says that the 
king offered to save the boy's life by a subterfuge : he would drop his signet- 
ring and the youth should kneel and pick it up ; but the martyr, perceiving 
that this would be taken by the attendant crowd as an act of idolatrous 
homage, refused, like old Eleazar. Also, that the mother, in her dying agony, 
exulted thus : " Father Abraham, I have overpassed thee, for I have raised seven 
altars for the sacrifice of seven sons !" 

The king soon withdrew in disgust from the city of these obstinate fanatics, 
as they seemed to him ; but the persecution lasted in full vigor for near half a 
year. It spread throughout the kingdom, and was imitated by the Ptolemies 
in Egypt. " Never before had the Jews been exposed to such extreme misery, 
for never before had they been persecuted on account of their religion. Every 
public act of worship was at an end ; every private observance was certain de- 
struction as soon as discovered." Paganism had usually been tolerant; its 
various forms, having no revelation at their back and little moral force of con- 
viction in their adherents, met and mixed easily. Strife had hitherto had 
secular causes and objects ; but this was a war of extermination, and a war, as 
it seemed, of the powerful against the weak, of the mailed hand against naked 
breasts — a war for the extinction of a faith. 

The trodden worm will turn ; the persecuted, when opinions and circum- 
stances permit, will find strength and spirit to resist. When life is worthless 
men say to themselves, "As well die fighting as by pincers and slow fires." 

Thus was it with the Jews in their extremity. Out of weakness comes 
forth strength ; the naked found arms wherewith to stand against the mighty, 
and weapons to overthrow armies and princes. Of conflicts against odds they 
had precedents in their past history, handed down by their sacred books ; but 



32 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



this was their first fight for faith alone. It was a fight not merely for the laws 
of Moses, but for liberty of worship ; not only for the Sabbath and their ancient 
usages, but for the rights of conscience. As such it was the warfare of human- 
ity ; its record is a precious and imperishable chapter in the history, of freedom. 
How often, in distant lands and ages, have these good examples nerved the 
oppressed not only to endure with patience, but to dare and do valorously ! 

It was a glorious war, alike in its motive, its persistence, and its success. 
Dr. Hales, in his "New Analysis of Chronology," says that " such a triumph of 
a petty province over a great empire is hardly to be paralleled in the annals of 
history." Dr. Raphall maintains, with reason, that this statement might be 

made stronger. 
1 The most nearly 
similar struggle 
in modern times, 
that of the Dutch 
provinces against 
Philip II., magni- 
ficent as it was, 
had sympathy 
and help from 
without. So our 
American colo- 
nies, in their strife 
for independence, 
gained allies and 
assistance from 
Europe. Whereas 
the Jews, abso- 
lutely unaided, 
relied wholly on 
Heaven, and won 
by their own phy- 
sical prowess and mighty zeal alone. It may be added that distance from their 
tyrants, which favored the later revolutionists, was wanting in the case of the 
Maccabees. The British armies had to be brought across the Atlantic, and those 
which opposed Holland were recruited chiefly in Spain and Italy ; whereas Syria 
was under one rule, and Antioch at no vast distance from Jerusalem. 




FLIGHT OF REFUGEES TO THE MOUNTAINS. 



REVOLT OF MATTATHIAS. 



The war began in what might seem a slight and casual way. Mattathias, 
an aged priest, descended from Aaron the brother of Moses, with his five sons, 



fr'V' JlJ ' Si* Ml 1 I' nr .. rTYf'/'Ji'i ™ ,'h fi .'•■'I >VS-' :'"' --■- ■ ' ■■■ I I I J I Lubi I 




MATTATHIAS SLAYS THE APOSTATE. 



(33) 



34 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

was living at Modin, a town near the seaport Joppa. "And when he saw the 
blasphemies that were committed in Judah and Jerusalem, he said, ' Woe is me ! 
Wherefore was I born to see the misery of my people, and of the holy city, and to 
dwell there, when it was delivered into the hand of the enemy, and the sanctuary 
into the hand of strangers ? Her temple is dishonored ; her glorious vessels are 
carried away into captivity ; her infants are slain in the streets ; her young men 
with the sword of the alien. What nation has not had a part in her kingdom, 
and gotten of her spoils ? All her ornaments are taken away ; from a free woman 
she is become a bond-slave, And, behold, our sanctuary, even our beauty and 
our glory, is laid waste, and. the Gentiles have profaned it. To what end then 
should we live any longer?' Then he and his sons rent their clothes, and put 
on sackcloth, and mourned very sore." 

Soon the king's emissaries, led by one Apelles, came to Modin on their evil 
errand, and asked Mattathias, as the chief man of the place, to lead in obeying 
the decree. On his indignant refusal, one of the renegades, officious to show his 
loyalty, came forth to sacrifice. At this odious sight the old priest " was inflamed 
with zeal, and his reins trembled, neither could he forbear to show his anger 
according to judgment; wherefore he ran and slew" the apostate. A tumult 
arose ; Apelles and his men were killed, and the idol-altar pulled down. 

Accepting the consequences of his act, the priest, now a leader of open rebel- 
lion, "cried throughout the city with a loud voice, saying, 'Whoever is zealous of 
the law and maintains the covenant, let him follow me.' So he and his sons 
fled into the mountains." Others joined them ; the little company of ten men 
grew to hundreds, and began to harass the heathen in the villages around about, 
making nocturnal sallies, and destroying several Syrian garrisons. 

The doctrine of non-resistance on the Sabbath was soon severely tested. Soldiers 
pursued a company who "were gone down into secret places in the wilderness." 
Being attacked, these "answered them not, neither cast they a stone at them, nor 
stopped the places where they laid hid, but said, ' Let us all die in our innocency ! ' " 
So they were slain, men, women and children, to the number of a thousand, with 
their cattle. It became evident that to be non-combatants on one day in the week 
was to be fearfully handicapped in conflict with a foe "who knew no such scruple : 
so Mattathias sensibly concluded, like a greater than he two hundred years later, 
that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Therefore 
he and his followers came to this agreement : " Whosoever shall come to make 
battle with us on the Sabbath day, we will fight against him ; neither will we die 
all, as our brethren that were murdered in the secret places." 

This resolution, being spread abroad among the refugees, changed the com- 
plexion and prospects of the nascent war. Recruits came rapidly to Mattathias, 
'and his activity increased with his force. His forays were frequent, and not 
merely annoying but destructive to the Syrians. Wherever he went, he demol- 




MATTATHIAS EXHORTING HIS FOLLOWERS TO DEFEND THEIR FAITH. 



(35) 



36 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



ished the idolatrous altars, and re-established the worship and customs handed 
down from the time of Moses. When his strength gave way, after some months 
of this rough life, he exhorted his sons to be valiant and zealous for the law, and 
appointed the third of them, Judas, to be captain of the band, with the second, 
Simon, as his counsellor. So he died in honor, " and his sons buried him in the 
sepulchre of his fathers at Modin, and all Israel made great lamentation for him."' 




PTOUJMY. 



CHAPTER II. 



JUDAH THE DELIVERER. 




choice of a successor was wise and fit, for 
while Simon was noted for prudence, Judas 
(or Judah) possessed not only great strength 
and fearless courage, but, as was soon proved, 
rare military capacity. He was thenceforth 
called Maccabeus, a name of uncertain origin, 
and applied by the Gentiles to all his party, 
and no less to the martyrs of the cause ; thus 
the widow who perished with her seven sons, 
as before related, though probably of another 
family, is called "mother of the Maccabees." 

The new leader, more than his ancient 
namesake, seemed to fulfill the prophecy of 
the patriarch Jacob : " Judah, thou art he 
whom thy brethren shall praise ; thy hand 
shall be in the neck of thine enemies ; thy 
father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp ; from the 
prey, my son, thou art gone up." He was soon able to hold and fortify the towns 
he took, for his force had increased to six thousand men. 

These small matters were beneath the attention of Antiochus, who was then 
revelling and playing the fool at Daphne. It has often been the mistake of 
kings to despise the earlier stages of a revolt. But his tax-gatherer, Apollonius, 
hated for his recent cruelties in Jerusalem, raised a considerable army, largely 
of apostates from his provinces of Judea and Samaria : him Judas defeated and 
slew, and took his sword, " and therewith he fought all his life long." The 
spoil of the vanquished served to arm many of the victors besides their general. 

After this, Seron, " a prince of the army of Syria," and next in command to 
Ptolemy Macron in the latter's province, levied " a mighty host of the ungodly," 
and met Judas at the rocks of Beth-horon, northwest of Jerusalem. The patriots 
complained, " How shall we be able, being so few, to fight against so great a 
multitude and so strong, seeing we are ready to faint with fasting all this day ?" 
But Judas answered, " With God it is all one to deliver with a great multitude 
or a small company, for the victory standeth not in the numbers of a host, but 

(37) 



38 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



strength cometh from heaven ;" and charging furiously down the hill, routed 
the enemy, and pursued them to the lowlands, with much slaughter. 

The king at length turned his attention to this business, and was much 
disgusted with what he heard. But at this time matters of importance on the 




JUDAS ASSEMBLING HIS WARRIORS. 

Persian border called him to that distant portion of his dominions ; so he left his 
relative, Lysias, as regent and guardian of his heir, giving him half the royal 
army and a strict charge " to destroy and root out the strength of Israel and the 
remnant of Jerusalem, and to take away their memorial from thence, and place 
strangers in all their quarters, and divide their land by lot." Lysias accordingly 
sent out forty thousand foot and seven thousand horse, under Nicanor and Gorgias, 
who encamped at Emniaus (the village where the risen Christ revealed Himself to 
two of His disciples), a few miles northwest of Jerusalem. 

This was a new experience to the guerillas of the hills. The troops whom 
they had met and vanquished in the field were raw levies of Samaritans and 
renegade Jews ; before encountering the victorious armies of Antiochus they 
might be excused for feeling as did, seventeen centuries later, the first followers of 
William of Orange, who for years could not stand, on firm ground, against the 
terrible Spaniards. But the leader never flinched. On the contrary, "As for such 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



39 



as were building houses, or had betrothed wives, or were planting vineyards, or 
were fearful, these he commanded to return, every man to his own house, accord- 
ing to the law." By this means he reduced his little army one-half, three thou- 
sand only remaining with him. 



NICANOR'S MISTAKE. 

In the Syrian camp, meantime, was mirth and rejoicing over the expected 
victory, and no fear of so despicable a foe. For "Nicanor undertook to make so 
much money of the [to be] captive Jews as should defray the tribute of two 
thousand talents [about two million dollars], which the king was to pay to the 
Romans ; whereupon immediately he sent to the cities upon the sea-coast, pro- 
claiming a sale of the captive Jews, and promising fourscore and ten bodies for 
one talent" — or only about eleven dollars 
apiece, a low price for able-bodied slaves. If 
the chonicler was right, this was but a poor 
calculation of Nicanor's, apart from the im- 
prudence of counting his captives before catch- 
ing them. At this rate all the men Judas had 
ever commanded could have brought hardly 
seven talents, or one-thirtieth of the amount 
he wished to raise. But, having nabbed the 
army, he probably meant to add to them what 
remained of the non-conforming population of 
Judea, and relied on their mounting as high 
as two hundred thousand, and being caught, 
and chained, and brought to market, easily and 
with small loss of time. 

However faulty Nicanor's reckonings — 
and, as the event showed, they were as far out 
as possible — the slave-traders of Cesarea and 
Gaza, and Tyre and Sidon, and perhaps even 
of Antioch, to the number of a thousand, had full faith in them; for "the mer- 
chants of the country took silver and gold very much, with servants, and came 
into the camp to buy the children of Israel for slaves." The wealth they 
brought, and even their own precious persons, were shortly put to a use widely 
different from that which they intended. 

Learning of the smallness of the patriot force, the royal generals thought 
it shame to waste their whole army upon so few; so Gorgias took a picked 
body of five thousand infantry and a thousand horse, and went by night to sur. 
prise the camp of Judas. Reaching it undisturbed, he " found no man there 
and sought them in the mountains, saying, ' These fellows flee from us.' " 




LYSIAS. 



4 o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Meantime the Maccabee, being informed of this plan, had withdrawn by 
another way and fallen on the camp of Nicanor, whose troops he soon routed 
and pursued with slaughter. Not waiting to take the spoils, he turned upon 
Gorgias, who was recalled from vain wanderings in the hills by the sight of his 
colleague's burning tents. A panic seized these invaders, who saw the tables 
turned upon them, and from pursuers became the pursued. In these two en- 
gagements, or rather in the chase of the fliers, nine thousand Syrians fell. 




JUDAS RESTORES THE TEMPLE. 



Gorgias fled to the fortress at Jerusalem, and Nicanor, " putting off his glorious 
apparel and discharging his company, came like a fugitive servant with dishonor 
ti Antioch," where he " told abroad that the Jews had God to fight for them, and 
therefore they could not be hurt, because they followed the laws He gave them." 
This action occurring on a Friday, the victors spent their Sabbath with 
peaceful triumph and due observances in the enemy's camp, where they found 



THE STORY OP OUR CHRISTIANITY. 41 

great and useful spoil of money, provisions, plate and munitions of war. The 
prisoners, especially those that had come to buy Jewish captives, were sold for 
slaves. Such were the manners of the time: "Woe to the vanquished' was 
the motto in all wars. 

Discouraged and reluctant, Timotheus and Bacchides brought another army 
against Israel, but were defeated with the loss of twenty thousand men and all 
their goods. Of this engagement we have no particulars ; but Judas was now 
so well provided that he could bestow a liberal portion of his booty upon widows 
and orphans, the aged and the poor. There was much destitution in the land, 
and those who had caused it now became the unwilling means of its partial 
relief. Of the charity which the patriots exercised toward one another, they 
Iiad none to spare for their foes. After the last battle they exulted in the 
death of one of their late persecutors ; another, Callisthenes, who had set fire to 
the gates of the temple, they found in a small building where he had taken 
refuge, and burned him there. 

The nex*t year, 165 B. C, Lysias the regent, constrained, it may be, by 
very shame, took the field in person with " threescore thousand choice men of 
foot and five thousand horsemen ;" that is, they were the best he could get 
after the disastrous defeats his previous armies had endured. Judas met him 
with ten thousand, his largest force as yet, before the fortress of Beth-sura in 
Idumea, in a contest more stubbornly disputed than its predecessors. There 
seems to have been no surprise, no rout this time ; but the Syrians left the 
field with the loss of five thousand, having accomplished nothing, but proposing 
to try again a year later. It was a less brilliant victory than the patriots were 
accustomed to win, but it left them masters of Judea, excepting only the heathen 
fortress in the holy city. The recovery of Jerusalem was to be the chief and 
dearest reward of their heroic efforts, and now the time had come for that. 
The capital seems to have been won without a blow, the garrison remaining 
quietly in the citadel of Acra. It was the first task of Judas to restore and 
rededicate the temple, which was in a sad condition, weeds growing in its courts, 
the sanctuary profaned and half ruined; but in June, 164 B, C, the day on 
which the worship had ceased three years before, it was resumed with grateful 
triumph. 

FATE OF A TYRANT. 

King Antiochus had been for some time in the eastern part of his vast 
dominions, and his absence had been of great advantage to the Jews. His last 
exploit was the attempted spoiling of a rich temple, either in Elymais or 
Persepolis ; here he was, violently resisted and shamefully put to flight. Arriv- 
ing at Ecbatana. the capital of Media, he received news of the disasters which 
had befallen his armies in Judea. Foaming with rage, and vowing to exterminate 
these unmanageable subjects, he turned his march westward. But he had 




FALIv OF ANTIOCHUS. 



(42) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 43 

never, except under dire necessity, as in his relations with the Romans, controlled 
his passions, and he had now to pay the penalty. To such as he the lust of 
wine is apt to be even more expensive than the thirst for blood. His long- 
continued excesses, with an accident of the road, brought on the loathsome dis- 
ease which, in the case of a later tyrant, Herod, is called in Scripture " being 
eaten of worms," and he died at Taba, a village near Mount Zagros, on the way 
to Babylon. Polybius ascribes his wretched end to the vengeance of the deity 
whose temple he had lately tried to plunder. One of the Jewish chroniclers 
insists that he expressed great remorse for the sacrilege he had committed at 
Jerusalem and the wrongs inflicted on their people, promised, if his life were 
spared, that he would make full amends, and even proposed to "become a Jew 
himself, and go through all the inhabited world and declare the power of God." 
If so, it was doubtless a case of " the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be." 
Such repentances are taken for what they are worth, and they are seldom worth 
the testing. So ended Antiochus, falsely called the Illustrious, leaving to our 
time the fame of a persecutor so savage, that he has hardly been matched in 
all later ages, except by Philip II., the " most Catholic " king of Spain. 

His death, like his long absence, was fortunate for the Jews. Considering 
Lysias inefficient, he had, in his last days, appointed Philip regent and guar- 
dian of his son and successor. But Lysias, not wishing to lose his office, at 
once proclaimed the new king as Antiochus V. (he was a boy of eight years, 
and called Eupator or " Well-fathered," an epithet as ironical as these surnames 
were wont to be), and installed himself as protector. On this the prudent Philip 
fled to Egypt. 

These arrangements lasted about three years, being confirmed by the Roman 
Senate from interested motives. Demetrius, a nephew of Antiochus IV. and son 
of Seleucus, was the lawful heir to the Syrian throne ; but he had long been a 
hostage at Rome, and was too vigorous a prince to be entrusted with so much 
power by the masters of the world at that particular time. So Lysias kept the 
regency. Old Ptolemy Macron, who as adviser of the late king had humored 
him and borne a part in the earlier atrocities, now changed front and urged peace, 
being statesman enough to recognize the ability of Judas, and to see that further 
warfare with so unconquerable a rebel was expensive and undesirable. Thereon 
Macron was deposed from his government of Ccele-Syria and accused of treason : 
unable to endure the fall from his former greatness, he committed suicide by 
poison. Such were the intricacies of Oriental politics. 

WARRIOR AND STATESMAN. 

Meantime Judas, though a conqueror and in possession of the capital, had 
no easy time of it. The tribes around, ancient enemies and never friends of 
Israel, betook themselves to petty and irregular hostilities, murdering such Jews 



44 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



as lived among or near them. Maccabeus had to chastise these offenders, to 
strengthen the fortress of Beth-sura, and to protect with new walls and towers the 
temple, threatened as it was by the citadel on Mount Acra, which he was not yet 




AN ANGEL OF THE LORD LEADS THE ISRAELITES AGAINST THE ENEMY. 

in condition to attach. To these cares was soon added the necessity for repelling 
renewed invasion. Having defeated a body of Idumeans under Gorgias, he attacked 
and reduced their strongholds. No sooner were these destroyed than he marched 
against Timotheus, who had raised the tribes east of the Jordan ; these also were 
overthrown, and their commander slain iu Gazarah, after a five days' siege. In- 
flamed by these reverses, the heathen raged yet more furiously in the east and 
north. In Tob more than a thousand Jews were killed, and their families carried 
into captivity. Endangered in Gilead and Galilee, they sent to Jerusalem for 
succor, which was furnished in haste by two rescuing parties, one led by Judas 
and his youngest brother Jonathan, the other under Simon. Unable permanently 




(45) 



46 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

to protect their brethren in these distant regions, the leaders adopted the wise 
measure of removing them to Judea, which, after the recent massacres and partial 
depopulation, could afford lands and homes to all. Two important ends were thus 
secured ; the refugees were comparatively safe, and at hand to swell the defending 
armies of Israel. 

When he marched from Jerusalem on this errand, Judas had of necessity left 
part of his force behind. This he committed to two brothers, Joseph and Azariah, 
strictly charging them to use it merely for the defense of the city, and to attempt 
nothing further. But these men, finding themselves in temporary command and 
pining for distinction, disobeyed their orders, and rashly planned the capture of 
Jamnia, a town on the sea-coast, south of Joppa. Gorgias, who commanded there 
— he who had been twice beaten by Judas — got wind of their attempt, and was 
not slow to improve his advantage ; the officious lieutenants were surprised and 
routed, with the loss of two thousand men. 

The moral effect of this disaster was worse than the material loss. It 
destroyed the prestige of the Jewish armies, hitherto invincible, and it mightily 
encouraged their enemies. Thus heartened, Lysias, the regent, led forth the 
army he had been some time preparing, " thinking to make the city a habitation 
of the Gentiles, and to make a gain of the temple, and to set the high priesthood 
to sale every year." He sat down before Beth-sura, having eighty thousand foot, 
besides the cavalry and eighty elephants. As the Hebrew army went out to meet 
him "there appeared before them on horseback one in white clothing, shaking 
his armor of gold. Then they praised the merciful God all together, and took 
heart, insomuch that they were ready not only to fight with men, but with most 
cruel beasts, and to pierce through walls of iron. Then they marched forward in 
their armor, having a helper from heaven; and giving a charge upon their 
enemies like lions, they slew eleven thousand footmen, and sixteen hundred 
horsemen, and put all the others to flight." 

Demoralized by this reverse, the regent made peace on terms satisfactory to 
the Jews, granting amnesty and the free exercise of their religion, they to pay 
tribute as of old. 

But this peace was rather nominal than real. The king was a child, the 
regent's authority was little respected, and the generals commanding on the 
frontiers, instead of repressing the lawlessness of barbarous tribes, found it con- 
venient and safe to give vent to their own vindictiveness and to the hatred 
everywhere cherished against Israel. It was impossible to protect all the out- 
lying Jews, scattered in scores of towns and over innumerable plains and hill- 
sides ; but Judas and his troops were kept busy with reprisals and punish- 
ments for repeated and varied acts of bad faith and cruelty. At Joppa two 
hundred Jews, under some pretence, were inveigled out to sea and drowned. 
At Jamnia a similar brutality was intended, but frustrated. Maccabeus, de- 




BURNING OF JAMNIA. 

(47) 



48 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

scending in wrath on those traitorous towns, burned the ports and shipping, 
and slew many ; the flames at Jamnia were visible at Jerusalem, thirty miles 
away. At Raphon, Timotheus, the son of him who was killed at Gazarah, took 
the field at the head of an incredible army, said to have comprised a hundred 
and twenty thousand infantry and twenty-five hundred horsemen ; at sight of 
the terrible Judas these fled in panic rout, and one-fourth of them were slaugh- 
tered in the pursuit. Some, with their leader, took refuge in a fortified temple 
at Carnion ; the city was taken and burned, and Timotheus purchased his life 
by releasing many captives from Galilee. Ephron, a strong city which refused 
to open its gates to the victorious Jews, was assaulted, plundered and destroyed. 
Everywhere the Maccabee succored his afflicted countrymen, and many of them 
followed his inarch homeward. Doubting the fierce Scythians, settled of old at 
Beth-shean, he stopped to inquire into the condition of the true believers there ; 
finding that, contrary to the usual experience, they had received only kindness 
from their pagan neighbors, he thanked the authorities of the city and made 
friends with its people. These acts of charity were in strong contrast to the 
general manner of that cruel age and of armies on their march. 

All these events, and many of minor note, are supposed to have taken 
place in a single campaign. Loaded down with non-combatants — rescued 
prisoners of war, refugees returning from dangerous quarters to the centre of 
their faith, women and children, the aged, the sick, the needy — himself riding 
with the rearguard that he might watch over the weak and lagging, the deliv- 
erer of Judea returned to the holy city in time for the feast of Pentecost. No 
sooner was it over than he went forth to meet Gorgias and his Idumeans in a 
stubborn and well-contested battle. Fortune at length decided against the 
heathen, and their leader narrowly escaped capture. The chronicler adds that 
when the bodies of the Jewish dead were taken up for burial, idolatrous emblems 
were found upon them : " then every man saw that this was the cause where- 
fore they were slain," and doubtless also of the duration and toughness of the 
contest ; for how should the Lord favor an army in which some false worship- 
pers were arrayed on His side ? 

On his way back Judas found time to take Hebron and Azotus, the latter 
a chief town of the Philistines, besides sundry fortresses, and to destroy many 
altars with their idols. Returning, he found that the royal garrison, which 
still held Mount Acra, disregarding the peace and taking advantage of his 
absence, had been threatening the temple and harassing the worshippers there. 
Therefore, turning his talents to military engineering, he invested the citadel 
so closely as to give hope of its ultimate fall. It was well provisioned and 
defended, holding, besides the Syrian soldiers, many apostate Jews ; but the idea 
was to prevent egress, so that no word might go thence to Antioch and no 
succor be sent to relieve the place. The renegades, however, saw through this 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



49 



plan, and made a sail}-, by means of which some of them escaped and reached 
the conrt. There they gave a one-sided account of what had been done, laying 
all the blame on Judas and his men for the breach of the peace. The regent 
and the child-king, listening to these tales and believing according to their 
inclination, determined again to invade Judea, and with a larger and better 
appointed army than they had yet put into the field for that purpose. 



LYSIAS AND HIS ARMY. 

And now was Jerusalem threatened by a greater danger and a more formidable 
force than it had yet beheld. Beth-sura again was the point of attack ; there were 
Lysias and his young master with a hundred thousand foot, twenty thousand 

horse, and thirty-two elephants. 
(Another account gives the fig- 
ures respectively as a hundred 
and ten thousand, five thousand 
three hundred, and twenty-two 
elephants, adding three hundred 
chariots of war,) Since these 
huge animals bore a prominent 
part in this battle, as in many 
another in ancient times and 
Eastern lands, it is worth while 
to cite the account of their dis- 
position and of the appearance 
of such an armament. 

"To the end they might 
provoke the elephants to fight, 
they showed them the blood of 
grapes and mulberries. More- 
over, they divided the beasts 
among the armies, and for each 
they appointed a thousand men, 
armed with coats of mail, and with helmets of 
brass on their heads; and besides this, for 
every beast were ordained five hundred of the 
best horsemen. These were ready at every occasion ; 
wheresoever the beast was, and whithersoever he went, 
they went also, neither departed they from him. And 
upon the beasts were strong towers of wood, which 
covered every one of them, and were girt fast unto them with devices; there were 
also upon ever}' one two and thirty strong men that fought upon them, besides 




THE ELEPHANTS IN WAR. 




(5o) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 51 

the Indian that ruled them. As for the remainder of the horsemen, they set 
them on this side and that side, at the two parts of the host. Now when the sun 
shone upon the shields of gold and brass, the mountains glistered therewith, and 
shone like lamps of fire. So, part of the king's army being spread upon the high 
mountains, and part in the valleys below, they marched on in order. Where- 
fore all that heard the noise of their multitude, and the marching of the company, 
and the rattling of their harness, were moved ; for the army was very great and 
mighty." * 

Against this terrible host the undaunted Judas went forth with a high and 
resolute heart, " committing all to the Creator of the world, and exhorting his 
soldiers to fight manfully, even unto death, for the laws, the temple, the city, the 
country, and the commonwealth. And having given the watchword to them that 
were about him, Victory is of God, with the most valiant and choice young 
men he went into the king's quarters by night, and slew in the camp about four 
thousand men, and the chiefest of the elephants, with all that were upon him. 
And at last they filled the camp with fear and tumult, and departed with good 
success. This was done in the break of day, because the protection of the Lord 
did help him." 

In this extremely active reconnoisance the Jewish hero aimed chiefly to give 
notice of what he could do on occasion, and to take any advantage that might come 
of his exploit. As it turned out, the main value of the skirmish (if so one-sided 
an affair may claim that title) was in its moral affect, which Judas was by this 
time as well able to appreciate as any later commander. He was an extremely 
sagacious captain ; he knew perfectly well that apart from strategy, or surprise, 
or violent attack and consequent panic on the other side, he could not expect to 
cope with a regular and disciplined army of ten times his strength, fighting 
under its master's eye. His faith was in Providence and the doctrine of chances, 
and it must be owned that his faith was never put to shame. He was very fitly 
taken as a model by Cromwell and his Ironsides. If he had lived in modern times 
he would have agreed heartily with the exhortation of that general, "Trust in 
God and keep your powder dry," though scarcely with the observation of Napo- 
leon, that " Providence is always on the side of the strongest battalions." He 
was never guilty of dictating to Providence and assuming success as certain ; all 
his prayers and preachments before battle had the saving clause, " If the Lord 
will." And thus he derived the strange successes he won through six most 
active and glorious years, and was kept safe in constant perils almost as long as 
he was imperatively needed on earth. 

HEROIC DEATH OF ELEAZAR. 

Nor did the Lord forsake him now, though deliverance came not at the 
usual time nor in the way he might most expect. The battle which ensued 




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(52) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 53 

was for the Jews neither a victory nor a disgraceful defeat. They made a good 
stand, inflicted some loss on the enemy, and then, " seeing the strength of the 
Icing and the violence of his forces, turned away from them." When a general 
has no chance of inducing vastly superior numbers to run, it is doubtless to his 
credit to get his men out in good order before they are surrounded and crushed. 
The occasion is chiefly memorable for the self-immolation of Eleazar, fourth of 
the noble brothers. " Perceiving that one of the beasts, armed with royal har- 
ness, was higher than all the rest, and supposing that the king was upon him, 
he put himself in jeopardy, to the end he might deliver his people and get 
him a perpetual name. Wherefore he ran upon him courageously through the 
midst of the battle, slaying on the right hand and on the lefc, so that they 
were divided from him on both sides ; which done, he crept under the elephant 
and thrust him under and slew him : whereupon the elephant fell down upon 
him, and there he died." Why is not this sacrifice as worthy of remembrance 
as those of the Decii, or Curtius, or Codrus, or any other hero of classic history 
or myth ? It was not Eleazar's fault that his voluntary death inflicted no great 
injury on his enemies, did no particular service to his cause, and had no other 
notable effect than to " get him a perpetual name," and afford one of not too 
many examples of self-devotion. The highest Authority has said that " greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

After reducing Beth-sura, where the garrison was compelled to capitulate, 
Eysias and the king besieged Jerusalem. It was the Sabbatical year of rest 
for the land ; preceding harvests had been small, the country being but partly 
tilled and in great measure desolate ; hence the city had been imperfectly 
provisioned, and numbers left it, owing to the scarcity of food. Its brave 
defenders were in extremit}'-, when an unexpected cause, in no way of their 
•producing, brought their relief. 

Philip, whom Epiphanes on his death-bed had appointed regent in place of 
Lysias, returned from Egypt and was acknowledged by the troops who had been 
with the late king in the East, and who had now, by slow marches, made their way 
back : this party seized upon Antioch and prepared to keep it. This news, which 
X^sias prudently kept to himself, changed all his plans. It was by no means 
worth his while to go on beseiging a provincial town when his power at home was 
threatened by a rival claimant. So, pretending that the king had come south 
with all his array merely to relieve the seige of his fortress Acra and to assert his 
authority, he made peace with Judas and was admitted within the city. Here he 
destroyed the fortifications of the temple, which was not in the terms of pacifica- 
tion ; but they could be built again, and the Jews were probably glad to get rid 
of him at no greater expense. Returning to Antioch, he speedily put down Philip 
and his pretensions, but foreign and domestic complications showed him the 
importance of having no more intestine strife along the eastern border of the 



54 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Mediterranean just then. To stop the tribal warfare and restore order, he took 
the strong measure of appointing Judas royal governor. 

No man ever rose to power by a more genuine title. This is the way rulers 
were supposed to be made originally, a king being he who kens and can, that is, 
who knows and is able to perform. From the regent's standpoint too (if he wished 
to manage the affairs of the kingdom rationally), it was a wise and safe selection; 
for Maccabeus was loyal enough to the constituted authorities, so long as they 
would let him be so. He was no fanatic ; he had no illusions, no dreams of empire 
or national independence ; he knew the time for these was long past. All he 
wanted was the free exercise of their religion for Israel, to be allowed to worship 
God in their own way, according to the laws of Moses. This granted, he would 
be a far more honest and capable servant of the king than the self-seeking para- 
sites who usually held the posts of honor. But he accepted kings on sufference 
and of necessity ; his Sovereign was in heaven. 

JUDAS GOVERNOR. 

The fugitive of the hills, the guerilla captain, the daring and defiant rebel, 
was now part of the system he had fought against, a king's officer, holding his post 
by grace of the powers of this world. But such promotion could not change his 
principles, nor elate the man who took good and evil fortune as from above. Nor 
does it make him more honorable in our eyes. We honor character and conduct — 
bravery and fidelity, and devotion to a great cause — not titles and the trappings 
of office. And indeed the later history of this era is not so impressive as what 
has gone before. It is too complicated, too tangled with changing heathen politics, 
to stir the mind as does the story of those first brave fights for freedom. There is 
a falling off, too, which estranges our sympathies from most of the men of Israel ; 
slackness here, foolish fanaticism there ; a decay of constancy and courage, not in 
the great leader, but in all except a few of those he led so well. It is sad to con- 
template these declensions ; yet where is the cause that has not had its ups and 
downs of spiritual as well as of carnal fortune ? What heaven-appointed captain in 
the hosts of Right has been served with uniform capacity and faithfulness ? And 
how many have left a record as spotless, as unbroken, as that of Judas Maccabeus ? 

It is with -satisfaction that' we take leave of Menelaus, the renegade, the 
oppressor of his countrymen, the tool of heathen tyranny. When the first peace 
was made, he had attempted to resume his office as high-priest ; but the Jews would 
have none of him, and he was driven to the citadel of Acra, where he did as much 
harm as he could, promoting attacks upon the temple. At the second peace he 
wished to be made governor of Judea ; but Lysias, who had found him a doubtful 
adviser and an instrument apt to cut the hand that held it, was now convinced 
that one so detested by the Jews could be of no use to the government. He 
was convicted of treason and sentenced to the ash-tower at Berea, where he died,. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



55 



probably by suffocation. With 
the Persians this strange pun- 
ishment was confined to offend- 
ers of high rank; the Greeks 
of Syria used it more freely. 
He was succeeded by Alcimus, 
another priestly apostate,whom 
the men of Jerusalem declined 
to accept. Repulsed, he went 
to Antioch, to emulate the mis- 
chievous career of his prede- 
cessor. 

Demetrius, the legitimate 
heir to the throne of Syria, had 
been a hostage at Rome from 
childhood. Finding the senate 
unwilling to assert his claim, 
he escaped from Italy, returned 
home, was acknowledged by 
the army, and put to death his 
young cousin, Antiochus V., 
and the regent Lysias. By 
reason of his long absence he 
knew little of Eastern affairs, 
and was ready to listen to the 
interested, not to say slander- 
ous, accounts of Alcimus and 
other renegades, who easily 
persuaded him to believe that 
Judas was the creature of the 
late usurpers and the oppress- 
or of all loyal servants of the 
new king. The high priest 
ended his harangue with these 
words: "As long as Judas 
liveth, it is not possible that 
the state should be quiet." 

Inflamed by these misrep- 
resentations, the king sent 
forth Bacchides, governor of 
Mesopotamia, with a great 




SUFFOCATION OF MENELAUs. 



56 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

army. This general had had experience of Maccabeus of old, and feared him; 
therefore, taking the advice of Alcimus, he made peaceful propositions, by which 
Judas was much too wise to be beguiled. Not so, however, with the people. 

The evil times were come again, and in one respect they were worse than 
before, for the faithful were no longer united. They had enjoyed a taste of 
peace, and wanted no more war: believing that their faith was not endan- 
gered, they saw no reason for further resisting the authorities. This was a 
personal matter mainly ; why should the nation be forced into conflict for the 
sake of a few men, or of one ? Puffed up with a little recent prosperity, they 
disregarded the warnings of Judas, and probably felt, as had some of old 
toward Moses, that he "took too much upon" him. Even the Hassidim or 
pietists, formerly his warmest supporters and stoutest fighters, shared these 
views. When Bacchides, with all politeness and assurances of safety, invited 
the chief men to a conference, sixty of them insisted on going, and were 
treacherously slain. Among these was Jose ben Joezer, president of the San- 
hedrim and uncle of Alcimus. One of the Hebrew books (the Midrash) relates 
a verbal encounter between these two. As the aged priest was led to execu- 
tion, the scaffold preceding him, his apostate nephew, finely mounted, called 
a halt and thus addressed the martyr: "Look at the horse my master has 
given me, and that on which your Master will presently make you ride!" 
"If thus to those who offend Him," Jose answered, "how much more to those 
who obey Him ! " — referring to the rewards of the righteous in another life. 
The traitor could not forbear another sneer : "And who has ever obeyed Him 
more faithfully than you ? " The reply came in another epigram : " If thus 
to those who obey Him, how much more to those who offend Him ! " — imply- 
ing the punishments of sin, here or hereafter. 

THE TRAITOR ALCIMUS. 

The foolish treachery of these murders opened the eyes of the Jews, who 
would now have no more to do with the king's emissaries, but said: "There 
is neither truth nor righteousness in them, for they have broken the covenant 
and oath that they made." So Bacchides, having accomplished nothing fur- 
ther, went back to Antioch, pausing at Bethesda to slaughter certain Jews 
and deserters. He left Alcimus with force enough to commit several out- 
rages, until Judas went out and drove him away. 

Next came Nicanor with a great army, swollen on the way by Jewish 
renegades, who were always ready to fight their countrymen when there was 
not much danger. Simon, being sent out against him, drew off his army, 
dreading to give battle; and Simon's greater brother, no less judicious than 
valiant, delayed the combat till it should be inevitable. On his side, Nicanor, 
like Bacchides, remembered a former defeat, and was so disinclined to strife 




SIXTY JEWISH RULERS SLAIN BY BACCHIDES. 

(57) 



58 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



with. Judas that he presently made peace, and remained for some time in 
Jerusalem as a friendly visitor. 

This state of things did not suit Alcimus ; he again complained to the 
king, who ordered his general at once to resume hostilities. Nicanor, finding 
himself in danger from his master's wrath and driven by necessity, endeav- 
ored by wiles to entrap Judas, whose prudence escaped the snare. At length 
the armies met in the field, with a loss to the Syrians of five thousand. 




THE VI5ION OF JUDAS— JEREMIAH WITH THE GOLDEN SWORD. 

But the victory of Judas was not complete : desertions left him weak, and 
he moved northward with a small company, while Nicanor returned to Jerusalem, 
full of boasts, and threatening to destroy the temple, unless the rebel chief was 
given into his hands. The city was now in sore straits : some Jewish writers 
claim that the 74th, 79th and 80th Psalms (in our Bible credited to Asaph) are 
products of this period. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 59 

THE END OF NICANOR. 

At length the Syrian general mustered courage to seek in the field his 
ancient foe, his recent friend ; for it is recorded that during their late intimacy 
in the holy city "he would not willingly have Judas out of his sight, for he loved 
the man from his heart ; he prayed him also to take a wife and to beget children ; 
so he married, was quiet, and took part in this life." But those days of peace 
were over for both, and the earthly end of each was near. Nicanor's heart was 
now full of bitterness. He had a mixed army, including many Jews who were 
there by compulsion rather than of choice ; some of these begged him not to fight 
on the Sabbath. Then he asked them "if there was a mighty God in heaven, 
who had commanded the Sabbath-day to be kept." And when they answered 
according to their faith, he said, "And I also am mighty upon earth, and I 
command to take arms, and to serve the king." 

The battle was on the anniversary of Israel's deliverance from Haman's 
plot, recorded m the book of Esther. The night before — it was near Beth-horon, 
on the border of Samaria — Judas saw in a dream or vision the high priest Onias 
and the prophet Jeremiah, who gave him a golden sword, as a gift from God, with 
which he should smite his enemies. With this tale he so mightily encouraged 
his men that they attacked with fury. At the first onset Nicanor fell, and his 
troops fled in a panic; "so that fighting with their hands, and praying unto God 
with their hearts, they slew no less than thirty and five thousand men." The 
countryside joined in the pursuit, and, according to one account, not a man of 
the enemy was left alive. Nicanor's head and right hand were carried to Jeru- 
salem, and fastened on the tower in public view — a hideous vengeance, which 
too long prevailed no less in Christian lands. 

After this came a brief period of peace, which the conqueror knew could not 
long endure. Statesman as well as warrior, he measured the past and future 
with an unerring eye. In the days of persecution, wben the temple was profaned 
and the voice of praise silenced, when the people had to deny the faith or die, they 
were ready to take the sword in hand and fight with the courage of desperation. 
But now they had Jerusalem ; the old order was re-established ; the smoke of idol- 
sacrifice arose no more, or only from voluntary altars. The war had scarcely 
any longer a religious character, and diplomacy was taking, or might take, the 
place of arms. Few of the people cared to go on fighting, and yet the terrible king 
of Syria would soon send another army, which Judas could not hope to meet. What 
was to be done but to invoke the mighty power of Rome ? That distant republic was 
destined to control the world ; already its emissaries were everywhere ; the greatest 
kings paid it tribute, and appealed to it in their disputes. It was heathen, but so 
were all thrones and potentates ; the one God had not seen fit to give his saints the 
dominion of the earth. The Senate was true to its allies and terrible to its- 
enemies, and more just than the monarchs of Asia. Once before now they had 




JUDAS' LAST BATTLE. 



(60) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 61 

interposed in affairs of Jndea, sanctioning the first peace made by Lysias, and 
demanding a deputy to be sent to meet their ambassadors at Antioch. What 
other succor was to be sought on earth? And it might be asking too much of 
heaven to fight all their battles almost without human implements. Surely 
it was God's will that His servants should serve Him with such intelligence, 
such native strength, such extraneous aids, as they could command. 

In reasoning thus, the vanquisher of so many Syrian armies showed himself 
possessed of a modest, a well-balanced, a progressive mind ; one capable of learn- 
ing, beyond the narrow prejudices of the past, and nowise puffed up by the laurels 
he had won. Accordingly he chose two men who had had experience in this 
sort of work, and sent them to Rome "to make a league of amity and confed- 
eracy." The ambassadors were entirely successful, and this alliance soon 
secured peace for Israel, when her chief defender was no more. 

Yet this wise and needful measure excited disgust and wrath among 
those it was destined to deliver. The old-time Jew, when not indifferent to 
the faith and an imitator of foreign manners, was liable to stiffen into the 
most rigid of conservatives, if not the most fanatical of zealots. Few were 
able to take the happy mean with Judas. The Hassidim, true ancestors of 
the Pharisees, regarded their former leader almost as an apostate, because he 
courted the friendship of the Gentiles. Their chief man, Jochanan, said to 
him angrily, "Is it not written, ' Cursed be he who placeth his dependence 
on flesh, while from the Lord his heart departeth ? ' Thou and thine, I and 
mine, we represent the twelve tribes of Jehovah ; and through, us alone, I am 
assured, the Lord would have wrought wondrously." 

The soldier's mighty heart must have sunk, not under the injustice of 
this rebuke, but beneath the desertion of friends and the ungrateful folly of 
his people. More keenly than ever he must have realized that the Lord 
whom he was accused of denying was his only defense, for vain was the 
help of man. Perhaps he felt that the end was near, and that it was not 
much he was leaving, as he went out to his last battle. 

•THE HERO'S LAST FIGHT. 

For Demetrius had sent forth "the chief strength of his host," a small 
but select body of twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse, being the 
noted right wing of his army, under Bacchides and Alcimus. After storming 
Masadoth and slaying many, they met Judas at Eleasa. He had but three 
thousand men, and of these near three-fourths, availing themselves of his mag- 
nanimity and of the command in Deuteronomy xx., verses 5 to 8, deserted him 
in his extremity. This time no vision from on high, no promise of victory, 
encouraged him ; but his ending was as chivalrous as that of any crusading 
knight. " When he saw that his host slipped away, and that the battle 



62 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



pressed upon him, he was sore troubled iu mind and much distressed, for 
that he had no time to gather them together. Nevertheless unto them that 
remained he said, ' Let us arise, and go up against our enemies, if peradven- 
ture we may be able to fight with them.' But they strove to dissuade him, 
saying, ' We shall never be able : let us now rather save our lives, and here- 
after we will return with our brethren, and fight against them ; for we are 
but few ' Then Judas said, ' God forbid that I should do this thing, and flee 
away from them : if our time be come, let us die manfully for our brethren, 
and not stain our honor.' With that the host of Bacchides removed out of 
their tents and stood over against them, their horsemen being in two troops, 

and their slingers 
and archers going 
before the host ; 
and they that 
marched in the 
van weie all 
mighty men." 
Their right wing 
was led by Bac- 
chides in person; 
this Judas routed, 
and pursued to- 
ward Azotus. But 
the Syrian lieu- 
tenant length- 
ened his line and 
turned it, so that 
the Jews were 
soon surrounded. 
The little band 
were as one to 
twenty-seven of 

their foes: with these odds it is scarcely credible that "tne battle continued from 
morning till night." The survivors, led by Jonathan and Simon, seem even to 
have kept the field ; for they recovered their brother's body, "and buried him in 
the sepulchre of his fathers at Modin. And all Israel made great lamentations 
for him, and mourned many days, saying, ' How is the valiant fallen, that de- 
livered Israel ! ' " 

His ending was the fit close to a noble and unsullied career. In all that 
is recorded of Judas there is no word to his dispraise; and it was his privi- 
lege to " crown a goodly life with a fair death." The subsequent history of 




EARLY CHRISTIAN TEACHING. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



63 



Judea was built up ou the foundation which he laid. His brothers succeeded 
to his leadership, Jonathan from 161 to 144 B. C, and Simon from 144 to 135; 
and Simon's descendants, known as the Asmonean dynasty (from Asmoneus 
the great-grandfather of Mattathias, who began the revolt against persecu- 
tion), were princes and kings in their native country for a century or more. 
For a little time after Judas' death the land was sorely troubled, till the 
Romans intervened and stopped the war ; and in 143 B. C. the king of Syria 
formally acknowledged the independence of Judea. 




di;me;trids. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE AGE OF THE APOSTLES. 

OR nearly the first three hundred years of her existence 
the Church of Christ endured persecution passively. 
The Master's direction had been plain: "I say unto 
you, that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite 
thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 
And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away 
thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever 
shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." 

This ordinance, which has not been held as of per- 
manent obligation, was at least considered binding on 
believers during the first centuries, and especially in 
their relations with the heathen. For this (if one may 
venture to analyze the motives of a divine command), 
there were two reasons. One was of obvious policy; 
any other line of conduct would have been suicidal. To 
resist the mighty power of the Roman empire, which 
then included almost all the known world, was to invite 
extinction ; had the adherents of the new faith assumed 
the attitude of rebellion, their religion, humanly speak- 
ing, would have been wiped out. 
The other reason for non-resistance took a higher view, and looked to inward 
principles and moral effect. The cardinal doctrines of the Gospel were the uni- 
versal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of men ; one of its chief practical aims 
was to cultivate the hitherto almost unknown virtues of gentleness, patience, 
forgiveness, charity. The world had held these softer graces in contempt ; its 
ideal was military ; the qualities men admired were sternness, force, self-assertion. 
The desired change could be brought about only by teaching and example. Ac- 
cording to the plan of Jesus, each of His disciples was to be a "living epistle" — 
a missionary aud evangelist, showing forth his belief in his walk and conversation. 
In dealing with the heathen, he was to remember that they were uninstructed, that 
they had not his lights : how should they follow the way of Truth, unless it were 
shown to them ? How learn that love was superior to hate, except by seeing the 
fruits of the new law in human lives? He was to "teach them better then, or 
bear with them." 

(64) 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



65 



The results of this lofty and generous policy were wonderful, as we shall see 
"by frequent examples. From a mere human viewpoint, it was a rash and desperate 
experiment, to try to vanquish paganism by submitting meekly to all that it could 
inflict * but it succeeded. The old rule of strife and violence was overthrown by 
its victims. Their dream, their Master's promise, that 

" into gentleness should rise 
The world that roughly cast them down," 

was fulfilled. Within ten generations the Church had conquered. 

But the ten generations had to pass, the "ten great persecutions" to be 
endured, before this end could be attained. " The noble army of martyrs " had to 
be enrolled, and through various crosses to win their crowns. The sad, and in one 
view monotonous, catalogue of cruel sufferings had to be written out on the pages 
of history. The first followers of Jesus knew what they must expect. They had 
seen their Leader bear the contradiction of sinners, the malignant hatred of Scribes 
and Pharisees, and die like a base-born murderer or a fugitive slave. The disciple 
was not above his Master. "If they 
have persecuted Me, they will also per- 
secute you," was, as has been well said, 
the warning of common sense. 

If any of them needed to 
learn this lesson, their eyes must ^g 
have been opened by the fate of 
deacon Stephen, and not long .-, > 
after, by that of St. James the 
elder. The source whence their 
earliest troubles were to come was 
plain in view. The temper of 
the Jews, as has been said, was 
fierce and narrow, ready on slight 
occasion to contract into bitter 
bigotry. Most of their ruling 
men, while rigidly adhering to 
the letter of their law, knew little 
of its spirit, and were eager to 
brand any innovation, any liberal 
interpretation even, as heresy and 
blasphemy. From first to last 
they were opponents and haters 
of the Gospel. The gentle elements which were not lacking in their sacred 
books had found no lodgment in their hearts. Slaves of tradition and of a 
frozen orthodox v, the warm and wide teachings of the Son of Man appealed to- 




st. PETER. 



66 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

them only to rouse angry repulsion and denial. So well was the national char- 
acter known in the outside world, that the origin of Christianity long injured the 
reputation of its adherents, who were regarded as a Jewish sect, and credited with 
the Jewish vices of scarcely concealed disloyalty to government and hatred of 
mankind 

THE WORLD AGAINST THE CHURCH. 

This fact may in part explain the hostility of Roman officials everywhere, 
and of the mass of their subjects. But other causes were not far to seek. The 
ancient world knew nothing of the rights of conscieuce : that an individual 
should presume to think for himself on matters within the range of custom and 
legislation was an offense almost unheard of. The genius of the Greeks, and 
still more of the Romans, was political ; religion was an engine of the state ; the 
human being was first of all a citizen or a subject. Much has been said of the 
tolerant spirit of heathenism ; but this had its limits. Cicero, who did as much 
private thinking as any man of his time, states this rule : " No man shall have 
separate gods of his own, and no man shall worship new or foreign gods, unless 
they have been publicly acknowledged by the laws of the state.''' 1 As Rome went on 
conquering the world, there was a gradual, though usually prompt, recognition 
of foreign deities, and a fusing of the religions of various tribes and provinces 
with that of the old republic ; but all these had the sanction of long continuance 
and acceptance, and new additions were forbidden. Judaism, among others, was 
tolerated, and in a way respected, though its votaries were greatly disliked ; but 
Christianity never was licensed or allowed until it was recognized by Gallienus 
as one of the religiones licitoe — it could not be, because it could not mix with 
the various forms of paganism. And thus it came under the condemnation of 
the eminent jurist, Julius Paulus : " Those who introduced new religions, or such 
as were unknown in their tendency or nature, by which men's minds might be 
disturbed, if men of rank, were degraded; if in lowly station, were put to death." 

Mcecenas, the patron of Virgil and Horace, a man of high character and great 
liberality, long the friend and favorite of the Emperor Augustus, thus advised 
that monarch, according to the historian Dio Cassius: "Honor the gods, by all 
means, according to the customs of your country, and compel others thus to 
honor them. Hate and punish those who introduce anything foreign in 
religion; not only for the sake of the gods, since they who despise them will 
hardly reverence any others, but because they who bring in new divinities mis- 
lead many into receiving also foreign laws. Hence arise conspiracies and secret 
meetings, which are of great injury to tha state. Suffer no man either to deny 
the gods, or to practice sorcery." 

Such being the ideas which ruled the world at the era when the new faith 
began its career, it was impossible that it should escape the jealousy of monarchs 
and the lash of executioners. It was a novelty, and therefore against the laws ; 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



67 



it was exclusive, and therefore it must be put down. However meekly submis- 
sive its followers, they were certain to be accused of treason ; though models of 
piety, they were long branded as atheists. 

It is to be remembered that heathens did not, and without illumination 
could not, understand the Christian position ; just as we, who breathe a Christian 
atmosphere and live in 
a society permeated by 
Christian influences, can 
only by some historical 
knowledge enter into the 
mental condition of the 
pagans of eighteen hun- 
dred years ago. With 
them, religion was a 
matter of outward ob- 
servance ; with us — if we 
have really heeded the 
Master's teachings — it 
is mainly a matter of 
heart and life. With us, 
individual freedom, 
within wide and defined 
limits, is a matter of 
course, and the interfer- 
ence of the state in the 
domain of thought, 
speech or worship would 
be an impertinence ; with 
them it was just the 
other way. The spirit- 
uality of the Gospel, its 
appeal to unworldly mo- 
tives, were to the heathen 
Strange and incomprehensible ; they stood amazed before its lack of temples and 
images ; they deemed it marvelous that men, yes, and women and children too, 
should lay down their lives rather than go through a harmless (and possibly 
meaningless) form, like casting a little incense upon an altar. Of this obtuse- 
ness of theirs, this deep and wide gulf between the two positions, we shall see 
abundant illustrations. And yet this very strangeness of the Christian principles 
helped to win many converts, and in time the general victory-. 




ROMAN COURT IN EARLY TIMES. 



68 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

It is not to be supposed that persecution was incessant : the Church had 
intervals of repose. Nor must we think that it was always formal and uni- 
versal. Now and then an emperor would issue edicts, and order his officials in 
every province to proceed against the followers of the Nazarene ; sometimes a 
proconsul or inferior officer, out of personal zeal or malice, might institute 
inquiries and apply punishments ; often the fury of the populace would burst 
forth, and the believers in that region would suffer before tribunals incited to* 
act, like Pilate, by the force or fear of local opinion. When Alexander of 
Pontus found that trade was dull and customers listless, he urged the people 
to stone "the atheists," and thus avert the anger of the gods. The similar 
device of Demetrius, who made images of Diana for the temple at Ephesus, is 
recorded in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. A flood, a 
famine, an earthquake, or a pestilence would be ascribed to the wickedness 
of the new sect. St. Augustine quotes an African proverb, "If it does not rain, 
lay it to the Christians." And even a learned man like Porphyry, eminent in 
the third century as a new-Platonist, could credit an infectious disease to the 
spread of the new religion, which prevented Esculapius, the god of healing, 
from attending efficiently to his business. 

As for the literary enemies of the Gospel, who probably did no great harm r 
their mode of warfare was legitimate, and they were abundantly answered by the 
Christian apologists. We may judge of the force of their reasoning by this 
specimen from the famous Celsus : " One must be weak indeed, to fancy that 
Greeks and barbarians in Asia, Europe, and Africa can ever unite under the same 
system of religion." It was not argument that the Church had to fear, but the 
power of the sword, the strength of ancient prejudice, the intolerance of new 
ideas, and the depravity of human nature. 

After these introductory remarks, needful to explain the causes and 
motives of so much bitter enmity to the most inoffensive of beings, and to a 
scheme which aimed only to promote human welfare in this world and in the 
next, we go on to offer, in order of time, a view of the chief attacks and the 
most noted or notable victims. 

Tertullian, an African priest who lived from about 160 to 245 A. D., tells 
an impossible tale of the Emperor Tiberius having proposed to admit Christ 
among the deities of Rome, and threatened penalties against any who should 
accuse his followers as such. Passing this fable, we come to the expulsion of 
the Jews from Rome under Claudius, A. D., 53. Suetonius says they were 
" constantly raising tumults, at the instigation of Christus .-" this seems to indi- 
cate that the Christians were confounded with the Jews, and the Author of 
their faith with a man then living. At that time, and long after, the Romans, 
even the best and wisest of them, had little real information concerning the 
new sect, and would have thought it beneath their dignity to inquire. 




(69) 



7o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



PERSECUTION UNDER NERO. 

This fact is curiously illustrated by a famous passage iu the Annals of 
Tacitus, describing the first great persecution, under Nero, A. D. 64. That 
bad emperor was generally suspected of having caused the late conflagration 
in Rome. Tacitus s'ays : " The infamy of that horrible affair still adhered to 
him. In order, if possible, to remove the imputation, he determined to transfer 

the guilt to others. With this view 
he inflicted the most exquisite tor- 
tures on a set of men detested for 
their crimes, and known by the 
vulgar appellation of Christians. 
The name was derived from Christ,, 
who, in the reign of Tiberius r 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, the 
procurator of Judea. By that event 
the sect which he founded suffered 
a blow which for a time checked 
the growth of a dangerous super- 
stition; but it revived soon after, 
and spread with increased vigor, 
not only in Judea, the soil that 
gave it birth, but even in Rome, 
i the common sink into which every- 
^ thing infamous and abominable 
flows like a torrent from all quarters 
of the world. Nero proceeded with 
his usual artifice. He found a 
crew of profligate and abandoned 
wretches, who were induced to con- 
fess themselves guilty; and on their testimony a number of Christians were 
convicted, not on clear evidence of having set the city on fire, but rather on 
account of their sullen hatred of the whole human race. They were put to 
death with extreme cruelty, and to their agonies Nero added mockery and 
derision. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and left to be 
devoured by dogs ; others were nailed to crosses ; numbers were burnt alive ;. 
and many, smeared with inflammable materials, were used as torches to illu- 
mine the night. The emperor lent his own gardens for this tragic spectacle ; 
he added the sports of the circus, driving a chariot, and then mingling with 
the crowd in his coachman's dress. At length the cruelty of these proceed- 
ings filled every breast with pity. Humanity relented in favor of the Chris- 
tians. Their manners were no doubt pernicious, and their evil deeds called 




ST. PAUL. 



I 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



for punishment ; but it was evident that they were sacrificed, not to the public 
welfare, but to the rage and cruelty of one man." 

This extract from the great historian gives memorable witness both to 
the atrocides of Nero and to the slanders then generally believed. Neander 
thinks that many of these "living torches" and other victims of the tyrant 
may have been accused as Christians without being so. There was evidently 
no regular inquiry, and no aim at what the laws called justice: the hated 
name of Christian might conveniently be bestowed on any malefactor or per- 
son of evil repute. 

Tradition connects the death of the two chief apostles, St. Peter and St. 
Paiil, with this persecution ; and Canon Farrar fancies that St. John also may 
have beheld these horrid scenes, and described them, in a large poetical way, 
in the Apocalypse. We may cite an eloquent paragraph from Dr. Farrar's 
" Early Days of Christianity : " 

" A great French artist has 
painted a picture of Nero walk- 
ing with his lictors through the 
blackened streets of Rome after 
the conflagration. He represents 
him, as he was in mature age, in 
the uncinctured robe with which, 
to the indignation of the noble 
Romans, he used to appear in 
public. He is obese with self- 
indulgence. Upon his coarsened 
features rests that dark cloud 
which the}* must have often ^ 
worn when his conscience was 
most tormented by the furies of 
his murdered mother and his 
murdered wives. Shrinking 
back among the ruins are two 
poor Christian slaves, who watch 
him with looks in which disgust 
and detestation struggle with 
fear. The picture puts into visi- 
ble form the feelings of horror 
with which the brethren must have regarded one whom they came to consider as 
the incarnate instrument of satanic antagonism against God and His Christ, — 
as the deadliest and most irresistible enemy of all that is called holy or that is 
worshipped. 




ST. MATTHEW. 



72 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



" Did St. John ever see that frightful spectacle of a monster in human 
flesh ? Was he a witness of the scenes which made the circus and the gar- 
dens of Nero reek with the fumes of martyrdom ? Tradition points in that 
direction. In the silence which falls over many years of his biography, it is 
possible that he may have been compelled by the Christians to retire from 
the menace of the storm before it actually burst over their devoted heads. 
St. Paul, as we believe, was providentially set free from his Roman imprison- 
ment just in time to be preserved from the first outburst of the Neronian 
persecution. Had it not been for this, who can tell whether St. Paul and St. 
John and St. Peter might not have been clothed in the skins of wild beasts 

to be torn to pieces by the blood- 
hounds of the amphitheatre, or 
have stood, each in his pitchy 
tunic, to form one of those 
ghastly human torches which 
flared upon the dark masses of 
the abominable crowd? 

" But even if St. John never 
saw Rome at this period, many 
a terrified fugitive of the vast 
multitude which Tacitus men- 
tions must have brought him 
tidings about those blood-stained 
orgies in which the Devil, the 
Beast, and the False Prophet — 
'that great Anti-Trinity of Hell' 
— were wallowing through the 
mystic Babylon in the blood of 
the martyrs of the Lord." 

It will be noticed that Dr. 
Farrar believes St. Paul to have 
escaped this persecution. His 
death, however, occurred about 
this time, or not long after, and by decapitation, probably without scourging or 
other torture ; that being the privilege of a Roman citizen, and he having been 
"free born," as he told the centurion (Acts xxii. 28). 

DEATHS OF THE APOSTLES. 

St. Peter is popularly supposed to have perished with St. Paul. The tradi- 
tional account, partly collected by Eusebius and St. Jerome, and not traced farther 
back than the third century, is that he was bishop of Antioch from A. D. 35 to 




ST. JOHS. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



73 



43, and then went to Rome, where he presided over the local church. But he 
was not at the capital of the world when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans, 
A. D. 58, nor during St. Paul's imprisonment there, A. D. 61 to 63, nor at the 
date of his own Epistles, A. D. 66 and 67 ; and it is not absolutely certain that he 
was ever in Rome at all. A legend, wholly unreliable as history but beautiful 
as poetry, relates that he escaped from the city during the horrors under Nero, 
and on the road met a form bearing a cross. By the moonlight he recognized 




RUINS OF DOMITIAN'S PALACE. 



the bleeding brow, the pierced hands and feet. Trembling, he asked, " Master, 
whither goest Thou ? " The apparition answered, " I go to Rome, to be crucified 
again, and in thy place." By this he knew his Lord's will, and returned to meet 
his doom. When his time came, he asked to be fastened to the cross head down- 
ward, saying, " I, that denied my Lord, am not worthy to suffer in the same 
posture as He." The probability is that he was martyred at Rome, A. D. 67 or 
later, after a mere visit or brief residence there. 



74 THE STORY OP OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Meantime St. James the Less, " the brother of the Lord," had met his fate 
in Jerusalem, where he was bishop, and greatly honored by the Jews for his lofty 
integrity and strict observance of the Law, being called " The Just." Josephus 
says that he was stoned to death, having been condemned by the Sanhedrim at 
the instigation of Ananus the high priest, a Sadducee, who for thus exceeding 
his authority was rebuked by Albinus the Roman governor, and deposed from 
his office by King Agrippa II. This was in A. D. 63. Hegesippus, the earliest 
of church historians, who wrote about A. D. 175, and fragments of whose work 
were preserved by Eusebius, asserts (what seems improbable) that the Scribes 
and Pharisees asked St. James to restrain the people from " wandering after 
Jesus the Crucified." 

" And he answered in a loud voice, ' Why do ye ask me again about Jesus 
the Son of Man ? He both sits in the heavens on the right hand of the Mighty 
Power, and He will come on the clouds of heaven.' And when many had been 
fully assured, and were glorifying God at the witness of James, and saying : 
' Hosanna to the Son of David ! ' then the Scribes and Pharisees began to say to one 
another, ' We have made a mistake in offering such a testimony to Jesus. Come, 
let us go up and cast him down, that they may be afraid, and not believe him/ 
And they cried out, saying, ' Alas, even the Just one has gone astray ! ' And they 
fulfilled the Scripture written in Isaiah, ' Let us away with the Just, for he is 
inconvenient to us.' They went up therefore, and flung him down " [from the 
battlements of the temple]. "And they began to stone him, since he did not die 
from being thrown down, but knelt, saying, ' Father, forgive them, for they know 
not what they do.' But while they were thus stoning him, one of the priests, or 
the sons of Rechab, cried out, ' Cease ! What are ye doing ? The righteous one 
is praying for you.' But one of the fullers, lifting up the club which, he used to 
beat out clothes, brought it down on the head of the Just. So he bore witness ; 
and they buried him on the spot, beside the sanctuary. He was a true witness to 
Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ. Immediately afterwards " [z. <?., six or 
seven years later, A. D. 70,] " Vespasian besieged Jerusalem." 

The other St. James, the son of Zebedee, had -been beheaded (probably at 
Jerusalem, about A. D. 45), as recorded in Acts xii. 2. Clement of Alexandria 
says that the executioner, moved by his example, professed himself a Christian, 
and tut two suffered together. 

For the earthly endings of the other apostles and their companions we are 
indebted to traditional accounts, which sometimes vary. According to these 
doubtful legends, St. Philip was tied to a pillar and stoned by the Jews of Hier- 
apolis in Phrygia (Asia Minor), A. D. 54. Barnabas, for some time the comrade 
and co-worker of St. Paul, perished at the hands of a mob stirred up by a Jewish 
sorcerer in the island of Cyprus, A. D, 64 ; after misusing him in various ways, 
they put a rope roundhis neck, dragged him out of the city of Salamina, and 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



75 



burned him. In the same year St. Mark the Evangelist, having labored at 
Alexandria in Egypt, endured similar treatment, and died on his way to the fire. 

Epaphras, Aristarchus, Prisca (or Priscilla), Aquila, Andronicus, and Junia, 
all fellow-laborers of St. Paul and mentioned in his Epistles, are said to have 
suffered at Rome under Nero, A. D. 
68 or earlier. About the same time 
Silas, otherwise called Silvanus, 
who had shared St. Paul's im- 
prisonment and escape at Philippi 
in Macedonia, as recorded in Acts 
xvi., was put to death at that place; 
Onesiphorus, with another named 
Porphyry, was torn by wild horses 
at the Hellespont, and the remain- 
ing apostles, except St. John (who 
long survived them all, and died a 
natural death), were martyred in 
various parts of the world. 

St. Bartholomew, having 
preached in Syria, Phrygia, Upper 
Asia, and (it is said) India, made his 
way to Armenia, and was finally 
brought before King Astyages ; this 
tyrant sentenced him to be beaten 
with rods, tied to a cross head down- 
ward, in that position flayed alive, 
and then beheaded. 

St. Thomas, who would not believe that his Master had risen from the dead 
till he had the evidence of the senses, is thought to have labored in India, where 
a sect of native Christians long bore his name. In that region, beyond the 
bounds of Alexander's conquests, the idol-priests accused him to their king. 
He was tortured with red-hot plates, then cast into an oven ; and when they saw 
(according to the legend) " that the fire did not hurt him, they pierced his side, 
as he lay in the furnace, with spears and javelins." St. Jerome says that his 
body, unconsumed, was buried there, at a town called Calamina. 

St. Matthew the Evangelist was sent to Ethiopia, and there, after zealous 
labors, was nailed to the ground and beheaded at Naddavar under King Hytacus. 
St. Simon the Canaanite, surnamed Zelotes, is said to have been crucified in 
Syria ; his brother Judas or Jude, surnamed Lebbeus or Thaddeus (the author 
of the Epistle), preached in Persia, and was beaten to death by the pagan priests 
there. 




JAMES THE LESS. 



7 6 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Of the other apostles, St. Andrew, Peter's brother, is said to have been cruci- 
fied at Patrse in Achaia (Greece), by order of the proconsul Egceus. Some pious 
fancy of later days has put these words into his mouth : "O Cross, most welcome 
and long looked for, willingly and joyfully I come to thee, being the scholar of 
Him who did hang on thee ; for I have always been thy lover, and have coveted 
to embrace thee." 

St. Matthias, who took the place of Judas the traitor and suicide, is thought 
to have gone further into Africa than any other, and there to have been stoned 
and beheaded. 

Other Christians said to have suffered in Nero's time were Prochorus, Nica- 
nor, and Parmenas, three of the seven deacons ; Trophimus and Carpus, friends 
or converts of St. Paul ; Maternus and Egystus, two of the seventy disciples, 
and many more. 

DOMITIAN. 

Of the second persecution, 
under Domitian, about A. D. 94, 
we have few particulars. He 
encouraged the vile tribe of in- 
formers, banished or executed 
many persons of rank on the 
charge (as Gibbon relates) of 
"atheism and Jewish manners," 
and had two grandsons or neph- 
ews of St. Jude, and relatives 
of Jesus, brought from Palestine 
to Rome and examined. They 
proved to be plain farmers, and 
testified that the Kingdom their 
Master had taught them to ex- 
pect was not of this world. The 
tyrant's jealous fears were prob- 
ably assuaged on discovering 
that the royal race of David had 
no designs upon his throne. 

During this reign St. Luke 
the Evangelist is said to have 
"been hanged to an olive-tree in Greece, at the age of eighty-four ; and St. John, 
banished to the isle of Patmos, saw the visions which he recorded in the closing 
hook of the New Testament. Special interest attaches to the fate of one who is 
mentioned in the message to the Church in Pergamos, a city in Mysia, the north- 
western province of Asia Minor: "Thou holdest fast My name, and hast not 




ST BARTHOLOMEW. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



IT 



denied My faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was My faithful martyr, 
who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth" (Revelation ii. 13). The legend 
is that this Antipas was enclosed in a brazen ox or bull, like that of Phalaris, the 
tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily, B. C. 552. This metallic image being hollow, a 
fire was built beneath it, and the victim thus slowly roasted. 

Timothy, whom St. Paul called his "own son in the faith," and to whom he 
addressed two Epistles, became bishop of Ephesus, and was there stoned, probably 
about A. D. 95, though some say earlier. 

At Ravenna in Italy Ursinius, a physician, refused to sacrifice to the gods 
and was sentenced. Under terror of death his faith was failing, when Vitalus, a 
native of Milan, who had come to Ravenna in the suit of the magistrate Paulinus, 
thus addressed him : " My brother, often by your potions you have healed the 
sick : take heed now, lest by denying Christ you sink to eternal death." At this 
Ursinius regained his courage and laid his head upon the block. Vitalus was 
soon after tortured and buried alive, and his widow, Valina, beaten to death. 
Romulus, bishop of Fesula in Italy, suffered about this time ; and in France, 
Nicasius bishop of Rouen, with Quirinus a priest, Scubiculus a deacon, and 
Pascientia a virgin ; and at Bellovaci, north of Paris, Lucian the bishop, with 
two of his presbyters, Maximian and Julian. 




EMPEROR DOMITIAN. 



CHAPTER IV. 

TRAJAN AND IGNATIUS. 

NDER Nerva, the first of the five good emperors, the 
Church enjoyed a brief respite. He put down 
informers, forbade slaves to testify against 
their masters, punished such as had done so, 
and released from imprisonment or exile those 
who had been accused merely as Christians. 
But a new law of his successor, Trajan, pub- 
lished A. D. 99, forbidding secret societies, was 
easily directed against the followers of Jesus, 
and many suffered in this reign. The most 
illustrious of these was Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, 
who loved to call himself Theophoros, or God-bearer. 
He was a pupil of St. John, a man of apostolic character, 
with much of his teacher's simplicity and sweetness, deeply 
revered (as his memory is still) in the Church, a pure type of that 
intense unworldliness and spiritual zeal which sometimes ran to 
the excess of disregarding, if not despising, this present life. The 
emperor being at Antioch, and thinking that the new sect required 
looking after, summoned its local head to his presence, and this colloquy ensued : 
"Who are you, poor devil," said Trajan, "who are so willfully trans- 
gressing our decree, and also tempting others to their destruction ? " 

Ignatius answered : " No one calls him who bears a God within him 
' poor devil,' for the devils turn away from the servants of God. But if you 
mean that I am evil inclined toward the devils, and ,that I give them trouble, 
I confess it. For, having Christ as my heavenly King, I set at nought the 
plots of evil spirts." 

Caught by a phrase, the emperor asked : "And who is this that bears a god 
within him ? " 

" He that has Christ in his heart," the bishop answered. 

Said Trajan: "Do not we seem to have gods in our minds, seeing we 
use them as allies against our enemies ? " 

It was a point with the early Christians to regard the heathen deities not 
as poetic fictions, but as real and evil beings. Unflinching, Ignatius replied : 
"The devils of the nations you call gods through a mistake. For there is 

(78) 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



79 



one God that made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and one Christ Jesus, 
the Son of God, the Only Begotten ; of whose kingdom may I be a sharer!" 

" You mean Him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate ? " 

Said Ignatius: "Him who hath crucified my sin with the author of it, 
and hath put down all devilish error and evil under the feet of those that 
bear Him in their hearts." 

The novelty of this idea 
— for any spiritual idea was 
novel to the politically-minded 
Roman — still amused and 
puzzled Trajan. Humorously, 
as one who answers a fool ac- 
cording to his folly, he again 
asked: "Do you carry the 
Crucified One in yourself, 
then?" 

" Yea, verily, for it ' was 
written, ' I will dwell in them 
and walk in them.'" 

By this time the emperor 
had had enough of what seemed 
to him crazy nonsense. He 
ended the interview by saying, 
"We decree that Ignatius, who 
says he bears the Crucified One 
within him, be led bound to 
Rome, there to be the food of 
wild beasts." 

What seems to us the brutality of Trajan's part in this dialogue should 
be credited not so much to the man as to the monarch, and chiefly to the 
age, — which was like all ancient ages. We must remember that the state was 
ever}'thing, the individual nothing. The dignity of office, character, and convic- 
tion which, to our minds, shines brightly in Ignatius was invisible to heathen 
eyes. The emperor saw before him only a dangerous fanatic, a blasphemer 
of the gods, a defier of the laws, an upsetter of that religion which was a prop 
and portion of the institutions of the empire. As Professor Maurice observes, 
the creed which the bishop of Antioch proclaimed, in the view of the Roman 
ruler, " went altogether beyond the limits within which opinions might be safely 
tolerated : it united the perils of the definite and the indefinite : it carried you 
to a depth which no plummet-line could sound ; yet it bore directly upon the 
common life and common relations of men." Any officer of the state would 




TRAJAN. 



8o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



have been likely to decide as Trajan did. He was no bloodthirsty wretch. 

like Nero and Doinitian ; he has the fame of a just and wise monarch. We 

shall see,, 
within this 
same century, 
an emperor 
far more hu- 
mane and de- 
vout than Tra- 
jan issuing" 
edicts against 
the Chris- 
tians, and, at 
least indirect- 
ly,causingthe 
blood of some 
of their best 
to flow. What 
we are called 
upon to abhor 
in these per- 
secutions is 
not the men 
who ordered 
or conducted 
them, but the 
false idea from 
which they 
proceeded, the 
imperfect sys- 
tem which 
made them 
necessary: — a 
system and a 
set of ideas 

FORUM OF TRAJAN. W ll i C h e n - 

dured for centuries, and which only Christianity, understood as it has been 
only in modern times, could displace by something infinitely better. 

A JOURNEY TO DEATH. 

The westward journey of Ignatius was by slow stages and under a guard, 
to one or other of whom he was fastened, as none but desperate criminals 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 81 

are now. "From Syria even unto Rome," he wrote, " I fight with beasts 
both by sea and land, both night and day ; being chained to ten leopards, that 
is to say, to a band of soldiers, who, the kinder I am to them, are the worse to 
me. But I am the more instructed by their injuries: yet am I not therefore 
justified." 

However painful the trials of the route, its fruits were abundant and most 
precious. If Trajan aimed, by sending the condemned so far from home, to 




RUINS OF ANTIOCH. 



avoid the effect which his execution in his own city might produce, and to 
terrify the people of those through which he passed, he was much mistaken: 
the result was rather to spread the infection through Asia Minor. The emi- 
nence of the victim and the strange measure of his deportation were, to use 
our modern language, an admirable advertisement for the Christian faith, 
which could not have had a more brilliant examplar. His weary march was 
almost a triumphal progress; wherever his eszort stopped, the bishops, clergy, 
and their flocks came to express their sympathy and to beg the martyr's 
blessing. 



82 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



On the way he found opportunity to write several of those letters which 
are by far the most remarkable of the early Christian writings outside of the 
New Testament, and nearest to the style and spirit of those inspired books. 
The genuineness of these letters has been questioned, and portions of them 
may be interpolated ; but the more personal parts, relating to his feelings 

and prospects, could not easily 
have been imagined or imi- 
tated. They bear the unmis- 
takable stamp of his singular 
character, his loving humility, 
his triumphant and estatic 
faith; they thrill with the joy 
of anticipated martyrdom. 
Among all the meditations of 
saints, in the whole range of 
devotional literature, there is 
nothing more remarkable than 
these burning and adoring as- 
pirations. If the tone seems 
strained and beyond the capac- 
ity of human nature, we must 
remember that such enthusiam 
was the life of the Church in 
that age of faith and of trial ; 
and no less that these were no 
mere vapo rings of a heated 
fancy, no vain imaginings of 
the distant and impossible, but 
the outpourings of a martyr on 
his way to execution. Hun- 
dreds at that era felt and acted 
and died as did Ignatius, 
though they had not his 
, over the battlements genius, his poetic strain, his 

wonderful power of expressing the rarest and sublimest thoughts. 

To the Church at Smyrna he wrote: "The nearer I am to the sword, 
the nearer am I to God; when I shall come among the wild beasts, I shall 
come to God." Hearing or suspecting that the Christians of Rome meditated 
an effort to save his life, he sent an epistle to dissuade them: "I fear your 
love, lest it do me an injury. For it is easy for you to do what you will; 
but it will be hard for me to attain unto God, if you spare me. Never again 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 83 

shall I have such; an opportunity; for if you but be silent in my behalf, I 
shall be made partaker of God; but if you will love my body, I shall have 
my course again to run. Wherefore ye cannot do me a greater kindness 
than to suffer me to be sacrificed, now that the altar is prepared ; that when 
ye shall be gathered together in love, ye may give thanks to the Father, 
through Christ Jesus, that He has vouchsafed to bring a bishop of Syria 
unto you, being called from the east unto the west. For it is good for me 
to go from the world to God, that I may rise again to Him. Pray for me, 
that He may give me both inward and outward strength, that I may not only 
speak, but will and act ; nor be ouly called a Christian, but be found one. 
For if I be proved a Christian, I may then deserve to be called one ; and be 
thought faithful, when I shall no longer appear to the world. I write to the 
churches, and signify to them all that I am willing to die for God, unless 
you hinder me. I beseech you that you show not an unseasonable good will 
toward me. Suffer me to be food to the wild beasts, by whom I shall attain 
unto God. For I am the wheat of God, and by the teeth of wild beasts I 
must be ground, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather 
encourage the beasts, that they may become my sepulchre, and may leave 
nothing of my body, that, being dead, I may not be troublesome to any. 
Then shall I be truly Christ's disciple, when the world shall see me no more. 
Pray therefore to Christ for me, that by these instruments I may be made the 
sacrifice of God. 

" I do not, like Peter and Paul, command you. They were apostles, I a con- 
demned man : they were free, but I am to this day a servant. But if I shall 
suffer, I shall then become the freeman of Christ, and shall rise free. May I 
enjoy the wild beasts that are prepared for me ! I wish they ma}* exercise all their 
fierceness upon me. I will encourage them, that the}* may be sure to devour me, 
and not leave me as they have some, whom out of fear they have not touched. 
And if they will not do it willingly, I will provoke them to it. Pardon me in this 
matter: I know what is profitable for me. Now I begin to be a disciple ; nor 
shall anything move me, whether visible or invisible, that I may attain to Christ. 
Let fire, and the cross ; let the companies of wild beasts, the breakings of bone 
and tearing of members ; let the shattering in pieces of the whole body, and all the 
wicked torments of the devil, come upon me ; only let me enjoy Christ Jesus. 
All the goods of the world, and the kingdoms of it, will profit me nothing : I would 
rather die for Jesus than rule to the utmost ends of earth. Him I desire who 
died and rose for us. This is the gain that is laid up for me. 

"Pardon me, my brethren: ye shall not hinder me from living. Suffer me to 
enter into pure light, where I shall be indeed the servant of God. Permit me to 
imitate the passion of my God. If any has Him within himself, let him consider 
what I desire, and have compassion on me, knowing how I am straitened. The 



84 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



prince of this world would fain carry me away, and corrupt my resolution. Let 
none of you help him ; rather join with me. For though I live, my desire is to 
die : my Love is crucified. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus 
Christ ; and the drink I long for is His blood, which is incorruptible love. I have 
no wish to live any longer after the manner of men ; neither shall I, if you 
consent. If I shall suffer, ye have loved me ; but if I shall be rejected, ye have 
hated me." 




1 fifiyvo : 



GATE OF ST. PAUL. 



It must be admitted that these strange inversions, this turning upside down 
of ordinary feelings and motives, this putting of life for death, and death in 
place of life, are not according to modern ideas. Times change, and manners 
with them ; the virtues of our day are practicality and common sense. Tried by 
this standard, Ignatius seems insane ; except that we have read something of this 
kind in the New Testament, and cherish it as a matter of theory, to our easy and 




ARCH OF TITUS. 
85 



86 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

inexpensive faith his ardor may appear almost as remote, as impossible, as it did 
to Traj an. But this was the kind of faith that was needed in the days of martyr- 
dom : this was the spirit which overturned paganism and conquered the world. 
Against such unworldly zeal as this, thrones and laws, emperors and executioners^ 
were helpless. 

At length, in A. D. 107 (or, as some reckon, 116), the Bishop of Antioch 
arrived at the Eternal City, and had his desire. Two doors were opened, two 
lions rushed out; a moment, and only a few of his larger bones were left: these 
were gathered with reverent care and taken to the city where he had lived and 
taught. Thence, long after, they were brought back to Rome. We can fancy 
how, in the course of centuries and the corruption of faith, the loving gratitude 
felt for such examples led to the superstitious honors lavished on real or alleged 
relics of the saints. 

PLINY'S FAMOUS LETTER. 

Another document of the greatest historical importance is preserved to 
lis from this reign. The younger Pliny, a noted scholar and author, a man 
of unblemished character, upright, courteous and humane, came in A. D. 110 
as governor to Bithynia and Pontus, in the northern portion of Asia Minor. 
Perplexed by the spread of the new religion in those parts, and doubtful of 
the exact nature of his duty in regard to its suppression, he wrote to the 
emperor for instructions. His letter is of such value as a testimony to facts 
otherwise imperfectly known at that early date, and as recording the attitude 
of thoughtful heathens, that we here give it entire : 

"It is my constant custom to refer to you in all matters concerning 
which I have any doubt: for who can better direct me where I hesitate, or 
instruct me where I am ignorant? I have never been present at any trials of 
Christians; so that I know not well* what is the subject-matter of punishment 
or of inquiry, or what strictures ought to be used in either. And I have 
been perplexed to determine whether any difference ought to be made on 
account of age, or whether the young and tender, and the full-grown and 
robust, ought to be treated all alike: whether repentance should entitle to 
pardon, or if all who have once been Christians should be punished, though 
they are now no longer so: whether the name itself, though no crimes 
be detected, or only offenses belonging to the name, are exposed to penalties. 
As to all these things I am in doubt. 

"Meantime, this is the course I have taken with all who have been 
brought before me and accused as Christians: I have asked them whether 
they were so. On their confessing that they were, I repeated the ques- 
tion a second and third time, threatening them with death. Such as still 
persisted, I ordered to execution ; for I had no doubt, whatever might be the 
nature of their opinion, that contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



37 



punished. There were others of the same infatuation whom, because they 
were Roman citizens, I have appointed to be sent to Rome. 

"In a short time, the crime spreading even when under persecution, as is 
usual in such cases, various sorts of people came in my way. An anonymous 
information was given me, containing the names of many who on examination 
denied that they were or ever had been Christians ; they repeated after me an 
invocation of the gods, and with wine and frankincense made supplication to 
your image, which for that purpose I had caused to be brought and set before 
them, together with the statues of the gods. Aloreover, they reviled the name 
of Christ ; none of which things, it is said, they who are really Christians can 
by any means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper to dis- 
charge. Others, who were named by an informer, at first confessed themselves 
Christians, and 
afterwards denie 
it. The rest said 
they had once been 
such, but had 
ceased co be, — 

some three years 

ago, some longer, 

and one or two 

twenty years or 

more. They all 

worshipped your 

image and the 

statues of the 

gods : these also 

reviled Christ. 

11 They" — 

whether these 

former believers, 

who were now 

apostates, or such 

as remained, faith- 
ful— "affirmed that 

the whole of their 

fault or error lay 

in this: that they 

were wont to meet 




SCOURGING A CHRISTIAN. 



together on a stated day before dawn, and, sing among themselves alternately 
(antiphonally) a hymn to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by a solemn 



88 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



oath, not to the commission of any wickedness " [as was popularly supposed], 
"but to abstain from theft, perjury, and adultery; never to break their word, nor 
to deny a pledge or trust committed to them. After this they separated, and in 
the evening met again for a simple and orderly repast ; but this they had forborne 
since the edict against assemblies. 

" After receiving this account, I thought it necessary to examine by torture 
two female slaves who were called ministers (deaconesses). But I have dis- 
covered nothing beyond an evil and ex- 
cessive superstition. Suspending, there- 
fore, all judicial proceedings, I turn to 
you for advice ; for it appears to me a 
matter highly deserving consideration, 
especially on account of the great num- 
ber of persons who are in danger of suf- 
fering ; for many of all ages, both sexes, 
and every rank, are or will be accused. 
Nor has the contagion of this supersti- 
tion seized cities only, but the smaller 
towns too, and the open country. Still, 
it seems to me that it may be restrained 
and corrected. It is certain that the 
temples, which were almost forsaken, 
begin to be more frequented, and the 
sacred solemnities, after a long inter- 
mission, are revived. Victims likewise" 
[for the pagan sacrifices] "are every- 
where bought up, whereas for some time 
there were few purchasers. Whence it 
is easy to imagine that numbers might 
be reclaimed, if pardon were granted to 
those who shall repent." 

Trajan's answer was in these 
words: "You have taken the right 
method, my Pliny, in your proceedings 
with those who have been brought be- 
fore you as Christians ; for it is im- 
possible to lay down any one rule that 
shall hold universally. They are not 
to be sought for. If any are brought 
before you, and are convicted, they ought 
street scene in antioch to he punished. But he that denies 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



89 



being a Christian, .and makes it evident by offering supplications to our gods, 
though he be suspected to have been so formerly, let him be pardoned upon 
repentance. But in no case, of any offense whatever, accept an unsigned accu- 
sation ; for that would be a dangerous precedent, and unworthy of my govern- 
ment." 

Tertullian 
makes a sharp 
point against 
this decision : 
" O sentence 
of a confused 
necessity! As 
innocent, he 
would not 
have them to 
be sought for ; 
and 3^et he 
causes them 
to be punished 
as guilty! " 
That is, if 
Christianity 
were a crime, 
its adherents 
ought to be 
searched out 
like any other 
criminals: if 
not, why pun- 
ish them at 
all? But Tra- 
jan's cool 
statemanship 
was not con- 
cerned about 
the logic of 
the matter. 
He did not 
care to draw 

increased attention to the new sect by undue inquiry ; but when cases were 
properly brought before the tribunals, the law must take its course. His high- 




IN THE CATACOMB OF ST. AGNES. 



90 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

minded contempt for those who stab in the dark very properly ordered the 
disregard of anonymous charges, which were usually the offspring of cowardly 
malice ; but no less he left the Christians at the mercy of informers who were 
willing to sign their accusations. 

Among the reputed victims of Trajan's decree were Simeon, bishop of 
Jerusalem, a very old man, who, after repeated scourgings, was crucified ; and 
Phocas, bishop of Pontus, who, for refusing to sacrifice to Neptune, is said to 
have been cast into a hot limekiln, and then into a scalding bath. The punish- 
ments of this age, as of nearly all other persecuting times, were so varied and 
hideous in their cruelty that the details of them would often be intolerable 
to modern ears. Judges, inquisitors, and executioners were apt to display a 
devilish ingenuity in inventing new torments for the human frame, with the 
aim, too often successful, of inducing their victims to recant ; and the posi- 
tion taken as a matter of course by the humane Pliny, that mere " contumacy, 
or inflexible obstinacy " was an offense deserving the heaviest penalty, exposed 
believers not merely to death, but to frightful and long-continued agonies. The 
idea, so firmly implanted in the general mind that it has given way only in 
recent times, that men have the right to impose opinions and beliefs upon their 
fellows, and that denial of the prevalent opinions is a crime, has made the 
history of religious differences the most scandalous in the annals of the race. 

Among alleged martyrs under Trajan, about A. D. 107 and later, were 
several persons mentioned in the New Testament, who had attained to a great 
age. According to the ancient legends, Simon the son of Cleophas, a near 
relative of Jesus, was most cruelly treated by Atticus, governor of Judea, 
being beaten for several successive days. The executioners wondered at 
the endurance of a man said to be over a hundred years old: he was finally 
crucified. Onesimus, the fugitive slave for whom St. Paul pleaded in his- 
Epistle to Philemon, and the bearer of that letter and of the one to the 
Colossians, was taken from Ephesus to Rome, and there stoned. Dionysius the 
Areopagite, cne of St. Paul's converts (Acts xvii. 34) and bishop of Athens, was 
martyred there, or, as some say, at Paris. Rufus, one "chosen in the Lord" 
(Remans xvi. 13), with Zosimus, was beheaded at Philippi in Macedonia. The 
eunuch, who was treasurer of Queen Candace of Ethiopia, and received the 
gospel from Philip the deacon (Acts viii. 26-39), is reported by St. Jerome to 
have preached in Arabia and on an island in the Red Sea, where he is thought 
to have laid down his life for the faith. 

Other victims during this reign were Publius of Athens ; Barsimceus, 
bishop of Edessa in Mesopotamia, with Barbelius and Barba ; Justus and Pastor 
of Completum (now Alcala) in Spain : of these we have no particulars. 

The third persecution is believed to have continued for a time under 
Trajan's successor, Hadrian, who, however irregular in his conduct, was a firm 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



9t 



supporter of the ancient faith. The sufferings of the Christians in this reign 
were probably caused chiefly by popular clamor and the compliance of local 
governors, who found it easier, and perhaps more congenial, to grant than to 
resist the demand for blood. Two hundred are said to have been slain in 
Rome, and ten thousand on Mount Ararat. Among the more noted victims 
tradition mentions Symphorissa, who perished with her children being 
scourged, tied lip by 
her hair, and then 
thrown into the river 
with a stone tied to her 
neck ; and Eustachius 
a military officer, who 
on his return from a 
successful campaign 
was required by the 
emperor to sacrifice to 
Apollo for his victories, 
and refusing, was sent 
with his family to 
Rome and executed. 
Eleutherus and his 
mother Anthea per- 
ished at Ales sin a in 
Sicily ; and at Brescia 
in Italy, Calocerius, a 
heathen, seeing the 
patience of Faustinus 
and Jobita under tor- 
ments, exclaimed: 

" Great is the God Of ONESIMUS, FOR WHOM ST. PAUL pleaded, taken to ROME AND STONE] 

the Christians!" and was presently put to death. These cases became so 
common that the victim's blood was soon regarded by the Church as a suffi- 
cient substitute for his baptism. 

Perhaps influenced by the apologies (treatises in defense of the faith) 
presented by Quadratus and Aristides, two learned Athenians, and more cer- 
tainly in consequence of a complaint from Granianus, proconsul in Asia Minor, 
Hadrian, about A. D. 125,, took measures to repress the popular fury, to punish 
false accusers, and to protect the Christians from all except the regular pro- 
cedure of the courts on formal accusations. 

Antoninus Pius, who reigned from 138 to 163, was a sovereign of the gen- 
tlest and purest character. A letter of doubtful genuineness expresses his 




— 



92 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

respect for those who "rather covet to die for their God than to live," and 
in earthquakes and other public calamities " are bold and fearless, much more 
than" their heathen foes. Accordingly he — if this document be really the 
emperor's — forbade the acceptance of accusations against Christians merely as 
such, and directed the punishment of those who brought them. 




UNDERGROUND PASSAGE IN ROMAN PALACE. 




CHAPTER V. 



MARCUS AURELIUS, THE STOIC. 



'HE Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180), in the 
character of a persecutor, presents an anomaly 
that has puzzled many. To judge him by the 
fact that the Church suffered heavily during his 
reign is to form a hopelessly false view of one of the 
noblest, purest, and sweetest spirits that ever tenanted 
a human form. A professed philosopher, his philosophy 
was no tissue of pretence and pedantry, but an earnest 
effort to learn how to live and die aright. In him the 
pride of Stoicism was softened to humility, and its ancient 
harshness to tender charity. Rigorous with himself, 
he was forever making excuses for those he could not 
reform. His Meditations, written only for his own eye, 
contain as much wisdom and piety as any volume out- 
side of Holy Writ. His transparent sincerity was a 
proverb ; few lives have shown such close agreement 
between theory and practice. Though a soldier, he hated warfare and blood- 
shed ; if he could, he would have abolished the hideous shows of the amphithea- 
tre. He despised officialism and the conceit of empire ; two of his maxims were, 
'Take care not to be Ccesarized, not to be dyed with this dye;" and, "Is it thy 
lot to live in a palace? Even in a palace it is possible to live well." He would 
have restored the Republic had that been possible; as it was, he counted himself 
the steward of God and servant of the people. 

How, then, could such a man be a persecutor? It must be remembered 
that the men of the past are to be judged by their lights, not by ours. 
Marcus was the slave of a most exacting conscience ; again and again he 
sacrificed his feelings to what he deemed his duty. So well was he known, 
the very Christians who suffered under him used to say, "If he but under- 
stood us, he could not be our foe." Such language as Trajan used toward 
Ignatius would have been impossible to him ; he who burned, unopened, the 
correspondence of the traitor Avidius Cassus, and begged the Senate to let 
those go unpunished who had assisted in that rebellion, was not one to- 

(93) 



94 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



preside in person at executions, or witness the tortures of trie meanest slave. 
If the horrors of the proceedings at Lyons had been within his knowledge, he 
would doubtless have stopped those bloody excesses promptly. The worthiest 

verses of Pope, coupling his 
name with that of the man 
most famous for virtue and 
wisdom among the Greeks, did 
him no more than j ustice : 

"Who noble ends by noble means obtains, 
Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains, 
I/.ke good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed 
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed." 

And yet he was a heathen, 
with the inevitable limitations 
of paganism ; and an emperor, 
with the heavy responsibili- 
ties of one who ruled the 
world. No Paul preached be- 
fore his judgment-seat; if he 
knew that the Christians had 
a literature of their own, he 
probably never saw a line of 
the New Testament. The 
motives which enforced and 
must excuse his great mistake 
are thus analyzed by one of 
the deepest thinkers and ablest 
teachers of the last generation: 
"As Marcus Aurelius was 
more devout than his predeces- 
sors, as the worship of the gods 
was with him less a mere def- 
erence to opinion and tradition, he felt a more hearty indignation against those 
who seemed to be undermining it. As he had more zeal for the well-being of 
his subjects, and a stronger impression of the danger of their losing any portion 
of the faith and reverence which they had, the political motives which 
swayed earlier emperors acted more mightily upon him. As he had convinced 
himself that the severest course of self-discipline is necessary in order to fit a man 
for overcoming the allurements of the visible and the terrors of the invisible 
world, he despised and disbelieved those who seemed to have attained the results 




AND THEY LOVED THEIR GOD BETTER THAN LIBERTY. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



95 



without the preparatory processes. As lie wished to reconcile the obligations of 
an emperor to perform all external duties with the obligation of a philosopher 
to self-culture, and found the task laborious enough, the strange mixture of the 
ideas of a poli- 
ty with ideas 
belonging to 
the spiritual 
nature of man, 
Avhich he heard 
of among the 
Christians, 
must have 
made him sus- 
pect them of 
aping the Cae- 
sars and the 
Roman wis- 
dom in their 
government, 
as well as of 
aping the Sto- 
ics in their con- 
tempt of pain. 
Such reasons, 
if we made no 
allowance f o r 
the malignant 
reports of cour- 
tiers and phil- 
osophers, the 
prevalent be- 
lief of unheard 
of crimes in 
the secret as- 
semblies of the 
Christians, the 

foolish State- SUBTERRANEAN ALTAR OF ST. AGNES. 

ments and wrong acts of which they may themselves have been guilty, will 
explain sufficiently why the venerable age and character of Polycarp, the 
beautiful fidelity of the martyrs of Lyons, did not prevent them from being 
victims of the decrees of the best man who ever reigned in Rome." 




96 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

These profound observations of the late F. D. Maurice (if we have patience 
to weigh them as they deserve) may help us to understand, what has often baffled 
learned divines and historians, the hopeless severance, the inborn antagonism, 
between the old system and the new. A heathen, while he remained a heathen, 
simply could not apprehend the Christian position. Even Marcus, who needed 
nothing but intellectual illumination to place him heartily on the side of Jesus, 
shows his complete misconception of the martyrs when he says that readiness to 
die should proceed from the exercise of reason, and " not from mere obstinacy, as 
with the Christians." It was the plan of Providence that these misunderstand- 
ings should exist umch longer, and the Church be tried as by fire for another 
hundred and fifty years, lest she should yield to the corruptions of the world. 
Slowly and painfully her foundations had to be laid in tears and blood ; the 
woful experience of the Redeemer had to be repeated in their degree by a 
long succession of disciples, that His ideas might take root and His work be 
spread abroad on earth. Without the ages of the martyrs to interpret it, the 
lesson of the Cross might never have really penetrated the general brain and 
heart. 

Now came what is called the fourth persecution ; and it raged with a severity 
wholly out of keeping with the character of this gentle monarch. Melito, bishop 
of Sardis, in a memorial addressed to the emperor, vrrote thus : " The worshippers 
of God in Asia Minor are now afflicted more than ever before, in consequence of 
new edicts ; for shameless informers, thirsting after other men's goods, now 
plunder the innocent by day and night, whenever they can find an excuse for it 
in these decrees. If this comes by your command, we know that so just a ruler 
would not do injustice, and we willingly bear the happy lot of such a death. We 
ask only that you would acquaint yourself with those who are thus persecuted, 
and judge fairly whether they deserve punishment and death, or safety and tran- 
quillity. But if this new decree — one scarcely suitable against barbarian enemies 
— comes not from yourself, we pray you the more earnestly not to leave us 
exposed to such rapacity." 

The decree referred to may possibly be one bearing (perhaps by mistake for 
Aurelius) the name of Aurelian, who reigned a hundred years later. This docu- 
ment directs officials throughout the empire to " mingle justice with severity, and 
to let the punishment stop when its object is attained." The aim of Marcus, as 
of other well-meaning rulers, was to wean the Christians from their supposed 
error and induce them to recant. But these directions were abused, by the 
brutality of ancient customs and the cruelty of many governors and inferior 
officers, to the infliction of torments which sicken us in the bare recital, and 
would have sickened Marcus had he beheld them. 






fled 
1 antag 
■ ' 
reus, who 
the side of Je 
at read! 
e obstin 
e misundersta] 

1 . h 

In their degree h 
ind Hi 

titerpret it, the 
tin and 



id it raged with a seve 
Melito, bis 

orshipj 
in :i : .' ;qu . 
s good- 

so just a r 



rora their s 
■ and 







AND BECAUSE OF THEIR FAITH THEY WERE THROWN INTO THE ARENA WHERE THE LIONS WERE LET 

LOOSE UPON THEM. 



(97) 



98 ' THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

POLYCARP S GOOD FIGHT. 

The venerable Polycarp had long been bishop of the Church at Smyrna. To 
him in that capacity Ignatius, on his way to the lions of the Roman amphitheatre, 
had addressed one of his memorable letters ; and in childhood he was said to have 
been a pupil of St. John. Through that apostle his flock had been honored with 
a prophetic message (Revelation ii., 8-10): "Fear none of those things which 
thou shalt suffer : behold, the devil shalt cast some of you into prison, that ye 
may be tried ; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto 
death, and I will give thee a crown of life." 

What may be regarded as a fulfilment of this prediction was described in a 
document which has fortunately come down to us. The letter is of unquestioned 
genuineness, and is worth transcribing here, with slight abridgment. 

" The Church of God which sojourns at Smyrna to that at Philomelium, and 
in all places throughout the world : may the mercy, peace, and love of God the 
Father, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, be multiplied ! We write you as well con- 
cerning the other martyrs, as particularly the blessed Polycarp ; who as it were 
sealing by his testimony, ended the persecution. For these things were so done 
that the Lord from above might set before us the model of a gospel martyrdom. 
Polycarp did not rashly give himself up to death, but waited till he was taken, as 
our Lord Himself did, that we might imitate Him, not caring only for ourselves, 
but also for our neighbors. Blessed and noble are the sacrifices that are ruled 
according to God's will ! Let all admire the magnanimity, the patience, the love 
to their Master, of those who, though torn with whips till the frame and structure 
of their bodies were laid open even to their veins and arteries, yet meekly endured, 
so that the bystanders pitied them and lamented. But such was their fortitude, 
that not one of them uttered a sigh or groan. Thus they evinced to us all that 
at that hour Christ's martyrs, though tormented, were absent, as it were, from 
the body ; or rather that the Lord was present and conversed familiarly with them. 
Thus they were supported by the grace of Christ ; thus they despised the tor- 
ments of this world. The fire of savage tortures was cold to them, for they wished 
to avoid the fire unquenchable. And with the eyes of their heart they looked 
toward the good things reserved for those who endure — things which eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived : but these were then disclosed to 
them by the Lord. They were then no longer men, but angels. So those who were 
conducted to the wild beasts underwent first cruel tortures, being placed under 
shells of sea-fish, and otherwise variously tormented, that, if it were possible, the 
enemy, by an uninterrupted series of pains, might tempt them to deny their 
Master. Much did Satan contrive against them, but, thanks to God, without 
effect. Germanicus, by his patience and courage, strengthened the weak. He 
fought nobly against wild beasts, and, when the proconsul urged him to pity his 
own age, provoked them, as desiring to depart more quickly from a wicked world. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



99 



He 



" The multitude, astouished at the fortitude of the true worshippers, cried 
out, 'Away with the Atheists ! Search for Polycarp ! ' One, by name Quintus, 
lately come from Phrygia, at sight of the beasts, trembled and gave way 
had persuaded 
some to come, 
unsought and 
of their own 
accord, before 
the tribunal. 
Him the pro- 
consul, by 
soothing 
speeches, in- 
duced to swear 
and to sacri- 
f i c e . On 
this account, 
"brethren, we 
do not ap- 
prove those 
who offer 
themselves for 
martyrdom; 
for we have 
not so learned 
Christ. 

"The ex- 
cellent Pol 3'- 
carp, when he 
heard what 
took pi ace, was 
unmoved, and 
intended to re- 
main in the 
city. But on 
the entreaties 
of his people, 
he retired to temple of minerva. 

a village at no great distance ; and there, with a few friends, he spent the 
time m praying, after his custom, for all the churches in the world. Three 
-days before he was seized, he had a vision while at prayer ; he saw his pillow 




.rOO 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



consumed by fire, and, turning to the company, said, 'I must be burned.' On 
bearing that those in search of him were at hand, he removed to another village. 
Not finding him, the officers seized two servants, one of whom was. induced, by 




POLYCARPS PRAYER. 



torture, to confess the place of his retreat. The magistrate, named Cleronomus 
Herod, made haste to bring him to the stadium ; that he might obtain his lot 
as a follower of Christ. Taking then the servant as a guide, they went about 
supper-time, with their arms, as against a robber; and arriving late, found 
him lying in an upper room. Hven then he might have escaped, but would 
not, saying, 'The Lord's will be done.' So he came down and talked with 
them. All admired his age and constancy; and some said, 'Was it worth 
while to take pains to arrest so old a man?' He ordered meat and drink to 
be set before them, and asked for an hour to pray unhindered. This he did 
standing, and was so full of God's grace, that he could not cease for two hours. 
"When he had finished, having made mention of all whom he had ever 
known, small and great, noble and common, and of the whole Church throughout 
the world, they set him on an ass to lead him to the city. On the way the 
irenarch Herod and his father Nicetes met him and took him into their chariot. 
They began to advise him, thus: 'What harm is it to say, "Lord Caesar," and to 
sacrifice, and be safe?' At first he was silent, but on being pressed said, 'I will 
not do it.' Angry at being unable to persuade him, they thrust him out of the 
chariot, so that in falling his thigh was bruised. But he, unmoved as if unhurt, 
went on cheerfully with his guards. As he entered the arena, amid a great 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 101 

tumult, a voice spoke, 'Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man.' None saw the 
speaker, but many of us heard the words. 

AWAY WITH THE ATHEISTS ! 

"When he was brought before the judgment-seat, the proconsul exhorted 
him thus : ' Have pity on your great age. Repent : swear by the fortune of 
Ceesar : say, " Away with the Atheists ! " ' Looking about upon the crowd, 
waving his hand toward them, and then turning his eyes to heaven, Polycarp 
repeated, ' Away with the Atheists ! ' Then the proconsul urged him : ' Swear, 
and I will release thee : reproach Christ. 1 The bishop answered, ' Eighty and 
six years have I served Him, and He has never wronged me : how can I blas- 
pheme my King who has saved me ? ' The governor insisting, ' Swear by the 
fortune of Caesar,' Polycarp said, ' If you assume not to know me, let me speak 
frankly. I am a Christian ; and if you wish to learn the Christian doctrine, 
appoint me a day, and listen.' The officer now said, 'Persuade the people.' 'I 
answer you] the other replied, ' for we are taught to pay all honor to the powers 
ordained of God ; but it is not fit that I should speak to them, for they are not 
worthy.' ' I have wild beasts,' said the Roman : ' I will expose you to them, if 
you repent not.' ' Call them,' the martyr answered : ' It is well to alter from 
evil to good ; but from the better to the worse we change not.' ' If you despise 
the beasts, I will tame your spirit by fire.' ' The fire you threaten burns for a 
moment,' said the believer; 'you know not of the judgment and the fire 
eternal. But why delay ? Do what you will.' 

" Saying this and more, he was full of confidence and joy, and grace shone 
in his undismayed countenance. But the proconsul, baffled and disturbed, sent 
a herald to proclaim thrice in midst of the assembly, ' Polycarp has confessed 
himself a Christian.'' On this the multitude, both Gentiles and Jews, shouted 
with insatiate rage, ' This is the doctor of Asia, the father of Christians, the 
subverter of our gods, who has taught many not to worship or sacrifice.' They 
now begged Philip, the Asiarch, to let out a lion ; but he refused, saying that 
the shows of wild beasts were finished. Then they all cried, ' Let Polycarp be 
burned ! ' The material was prepared with speed, for the people brought fuel 
from the workshops and baths, the Jews being foremost in this office, as usual. 

"As soon as the pile was ready, he stripped off his clothes, loosened his 
girdle, and tried to remove his shoes, — a thing unusual for him, for his blam- 
less integrity had long since won such regard that the faithful strove with 
each other for the honor of ministering to him. When they were about to 
fasten him to the stake, he said, ' Let be ; for He who gives me strength to 
endure the fire will enable me also to remain unmoved in it.' On this they 
bound, but did not nail him. And he, being tied as a ram selected from a 
great flock, a burnt-offering acceptable to God, joined his hands and said, 



102 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



'O Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son, through Whom we have attained 
the knowledge of Thee, O God of angels and principalities, and of all crea- 
tion, and of all the just who live in Thy sight; I bless Thee that Thou hast 
counted me worthy of this day and this hour, to receive my portion in the 

number of martyrs, in the cup 
of Christ, for the resurrection 
to eternal life, both of soul and 
body, in the incorruption of 
the Holy Ghost : among whom 
may I be received before Thee 
this day as a sacrifice well- 
favored and acceptable, which 
Thou hast prepared, promised, 
and fulfilled. Wherefore I 
praise Thee, I bless Thee, I 
glorify Thee, by the eternal 
High Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy 
well-beloved Son; through 
Whom, with Him in the Holy 
Spirit, be glory to Thee, both 
now and forever. Amen ! ' 

a And when he had ended, 
saying amen aloud, the officers 
lighted the fire, and a great 
flame bursting forth, we, to 
whom it was given to see, and 
who are reserved to relate the 
facts to others, beheld a wonder. 
For the flame, forming the ap- 
pearance of an arch, like the 
sail of a vessel filled with wind, 
was as a wall about the mar- 
tyr's body, which was in the 
midst, not as burning flesh, but 
as gold and silver refined in a furnace. We received also in our nostrils 
such a fragrance as arises from frankincense, or some other precious perfume. 
At length the impious, observing that his body could not be consumed by the 
fire, ordered the executioner to pierce it with his sword. On this a quantity 
of blood gushed out, and the crowd were astonished to see the difference thus 
displayed between unbelievers and the elect." 




A CHRISTIAN SENTENCED TO DEATH. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



103 



The letter goes on to tell how the Jews and certain heathens tried to 
prevent the Christians from obtaining the remains of their bishop, pretending 
to fear that they would "leave the Crucified, and begin to worship him." Moved 
by their representations, "the centurion put the body in the midst of the 
fire and burned it. Then we gathered up his bones, more precious than gold 
and jewels, and deposited them in a proper place." 

This is the earliest contemporary and full account that we have of any 
martydom : this fact, and the eminence of the victim, give it great value. 
Eleven Christians from Philadelphia suffered with Polycarp : the date was A. 
D. 166. 

About this time, or a little earlier, Ptolemy and Lucius were put to death 
at Alexandria. A certain woman of Rome, and apparently of rank, had with 
her husband led a profligate life. Being converted, she mended her ways, 
and did all in her power to reclaim her spouse, but to no avail. At length, 
unable to endure his wickedness, she left him; whereupon he accused her to 
the authorities as a Christian. Her case being delayed, he turned his malice 
against her teacher, Ptolem}-. This man, after long imprisonment, was 
brought be- 

and freely gll ./.;.: - ^ 

confessed his | _" " ^« - 

called : ; J 



s o 

crime 



"for. 




as the ancient 
record says, 
"no true 
Christian can 
act other- 
wise." He 
was ordered 
to be led to 
instant execu- 
tion ; whereon ^Kj^s, 
Lucius, who ' ,S;( ^^^sf 
was among 
the spectators, 

offered a remonstrance, saying that to put men to death merely for a name, 
with no charge of real wrongdoing, was absurd and unjust, unworthy of the 
late Emperor Pius, or of his (adopted.) son the Philosopher, or of the sacred 
Senate. All that the prefect thought fit to answer was, "You seem to be of 
the same sect." "I am," said Lucius. He was sent to the block with his 



BRIDGE OI- XOJIEXTASO. 



io4 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

friend, "rejoicing to pass from under an unrighteous government to that of 
his gracious Father and King." 

JUSTIN MARTYR. 

This story comes to us from Justin Martyr, who added that he expected 
the same fate. A native of Samaria, he was bred a heathen, received a superior 
education, and always wore the philosopher's cloak, even after his conversion. 
He wrote several books, including two apologies, the one addressed to Anton- 
inus Pius, the other to Marcus Aurelius. 

Accused by Crescens, a rival teacher, probably in the year 167, he was 
brought with others before the prefect Rusticus, himself a noted Stoic, who 
had been one of the tutors of the emperor. This officer asked to what school 
he was attached. He announced that he had tried all methods of learning, 
but had found satisfaction only in the Gospel. "Wretch !" Rusticus exclaimed, 
"are you deluded by that superstition?" "I follow the Christians," said 
Justin, "and their doctrine is the true one." "And what is their doctrine?" 
" This : we believe in one only God, the Creator of all things visible and 
invisible. We confess our Lord Jesus Christ to be the Son of God, the 
Saviour, Teacher, and Master of those who obey Him, and the future Judge 
of mankind." The prefect asked, "Where do the Christians assemble?" 
"Our God is not confined to any especial place." "Where do you instruct 
you scholars?" Justin gave his residence, and added that he explained the 
doctrine to such as chose to come to him. 

Then Rusticus said, "You who are called eloquent, and fancy that you 
have the truth ; if I scourge you from head to foot, do you think you will go 
to heaven?" "Though I suffer what you threaten, I expect to receive the 
portion of those who obey Christ ; for to such the divine grace is reserved to 
the world's end." "So you think you will ascend to a reward on high?" "I 
do not think so, I know it, and am assured beyond all question." "Enough of 
this, ' said the magistrate. "Let us turn to the business in hand. Agree 
together and offer sacrifice to the gods." Said Justin, "No man of under- 
standing forsakes true religion for error and impiety." "If you do not obey, 
you shall endure torments without mercy." "We desire chiefly to bear tortures 
for our Lord, and to be saved ; so shall we have confidence at the last day." 
To this the others assented, and said, " Be quick ; we are Christians, and cannot 
sacrifice to idols." They were scourged and then beheaded ; their friends 
obtained their bodies for burial. 

FELICITAS AND HER SONS. 

Records less reliable than those which describe the ending of Justin and 
Polycarp, give the story of Felicitas, a Roman widow, who, with her seven sons, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



™S 



suffered about this time. Except for place and date, the tradition is very- 
similar to that of " the Mother of the Maccabees." The family had position 
and influence, were all devout believers, and had brought many to Christ. 
Accused by the heathen priests, they were privately examined by Publius, who 
strove to spare them and turn them from the faith. But Felicitas said, " Flat- 
teries and threats alike are useless ; I am ready to endure all." The magis- 
trate urged her to die alone if she would, but to have a mother's pity on her 




FELICITAS AND HER SEVEN SONS. 



sons, and command them to ransom their lives by sacrificing. She answered, 
"Your compassion is cruelty; so would my sons lose their immortal souls, and 
become slaves of Satan." To them she said, "Remain steadfast in the faith, and 
confess Christ ; for He and His saints are waiting for you. Behold, heaven is 
open before you ; fight valiantly for your souls, and show your love to Christ." 



io6 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Then the judge became angry and said, "How dare you speak thus impu- 
dently, and make your sons obstinate in disobedience?" She replied, "If you 
knew our Saviour Jesus, and the power of God, you would no more persecute 
His people, nor tempt them, nor revile them ; for whoever curses Christ and 
His faithful ones, blasphemes God, who by faith dwells in their hearts." Then 
they struck her in the face, to silence her, but in vain. 

Then the judge took aside each of the seven brothers, and talked first to 
one and then to another, striving to persuade them. When he could not 
prevail, he had them severally punished, in presence of their mother. Janua- 
rius, the eldest, was beaten with a scourge made of cords, each having a leaden 
ball at the end ; under this torture he died. Felix and Philip met the same 
fate, except that rods were substituted for the scourge. Sylvanus, the widow's 
fourth son, was cast down from a high place. Tired with their useless labors, 
the executioners resorted to the axe, and the three youngest brothers, Alex- 
ander, Vitalis and Martial, were beheaded. Last of all the mother died, like- 
wise by the sword. 

Another tradition, preserved by Euschias, the historian of the Church in 
Constantine's time, records the death of Carpus, Papylus, Agathonicus, and 
others, who won the crown of martyrdom at Pergamus in Asia Minor, about 
A. D. 1 68. 

THE "THUNDERING LEGION." 

The most famous, and also perhaps the least veracious, of the legends 
of this reign is that of the "Thundering Legion." In the year 174 the 
emperor was warring against the Marcomanni and the Quadi, two barbarous 
tribes, in what is now Hungary. It was a hot summer, and the army 
suffered greatly from drcmght ; the enemy were at hand and likely to attack, 
and the soldiers could get no water to appease their thirst. In this extremity 
relief came (according to the tale) from the prayers of the twelfth legion, 
which was largely composed of Christians. As they rose from their knees a 
heavy storm burst over their heads, and the Romans presently gained a 
victory. The Christian writers of the third century claimed that Aurelius 
had acknowledged this service, and become more favorable to the Church on 
account of it. But this was not so, for the persecution continued in full 
vigor, as we shall see. The Pagans credited the welcome storm to their own 
gods, and to the prayers of the pious emperor. Pictures were said to repre- 
sent him in an attitude of supplication, and the soldiers catching the rain 
in their helmets ; and a coin of this reign shows Jupiter sending thunder- 
bolts upon the cowering barbarians. There was such an occurrence ; doubtless 
the Christians in the army prayed, and their prayers were answered ; but 
the only credit they received for a supposed miraculous deliverance was from 
their own people. 




CHAPTER VI. 



HORRORS AT LYONS. 



AR more authentic is the account of the frightful 
persecution at Lyons and Vienne in southern 
France, A. D. 177. It is contained in a long 
letter from these afflicted Churches, after the 
model of that of Smyrna eleven years before, 
addressed "to the brethren in Asia and Phry- 
gia." Communication between these distant 
regions, almost at the two extremities of the 
Mediterranean, seems to have been close and 
frequent. The probable writer of this epistle, 
Irenaeus, was a pupil of Poly carp, eminent 
among the fathers of the Church, and from 
this date bishop of Lyons. 

The attack began with an outbreak of 
fanatical fury on the part of the populace, and was carried on through the 
hands of officers scarcely less savage than the mob. In the midst of it the 
governor sent to Rome for instructions, and was told to execute those who 
would not recant. But he far exceeded his orders, preluding or heightening 
the final penalty of death with wholesale and abominable horrors. We retain 
the substance and mainly the language of the local report, omitting what seems 
comparatively unimportant. 

"We are not able to express the greatness of the affliction sustained here 
by the faithful, the intense hatred of the heathen, nor the complicated sufferings 
of the blessed martyrs. The enemy assailed us with all his might, and in his 
first efforts showed intent to exert his malice without limit and beyond control. ' 
He left no method untried to habituate his servants to the bloody work, and to 
prepare them by previous attempts against the flock. We were forbidden to 
enter any house but our own, to be seen in the baths, the market, or any public 
place. But God's grace fought for us, preserving the weak and exposing the 
strong, who as pillars were able to withstand him in patience, and to draw the 
whole fury of the wicked against themselves. These entered into the contest, 
and bore every species of pain and reproach. What was heavy to others, to 
them was light, while the)- were hastening to Christ, evincing that the sufferings. 

(107) 



io8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be 
revealed in us. 

" The first trial was from the populace : shouts, blows, the dragging of our 
bodies, the plundering of our goods, casting of stones, confinement within our 
houses, and all the indignities that a fierce and outrageous multitude can inflict. 
And next, being led into the forum, they were asked, before all the people, 
whether they were Christians ; and, on confessing, were shut up in prison till 
the governor should arrive. Brought at length before him, he treated us 
brutally. This aroused the spirit of Vettius Epagathus, a young man of ex- 
emplary life, blameless 
in obedience, unwearied 
in charities, full of 
godly zeal. Indignant 
at seeing justice thus 
perverted, he asked to 
be heard on behalf of 
his brethren, and of- 
fered to prove that athe- 
ism and impiety were 
not among them. The 
spectators cried out 
against him, and the 
governor, vexed at such 
a demand from a man 
of rank, merely asked 
if he was a Christian. 
He openly confessed it, 
and was ranked among 
the martyrs. They 
called him ' the Advo- 
cate of the Christians ;' 
but he had an Advocate 
within, the Holy Ghost, 
as he proved by laying 
down his life for his 
friends. He was, and 
still is, a true disciple 
of Christ. 

"Others now began 

to be eminent. The chief martyrs were prepared for the contest, and did their 
part with alacrity of mind. Others seemed not so ready, but rather unexercised, 




IN THE AMPHITHEATRE. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



109 



weak, and unable to sustain the shock of such a conflict. Ten of these lapsed : 
their case filled us with sorrow, and cast down the spirits of those not yet arrested, 
who bore many indignities rather than desert the martyrs in their distress. We 
all feared the uncertain issue of confession ; not that we dreaded the tortures, 
but the danger of apostasy. Now daily such were seized as were counted worthy 
to take the places of the lapsed — the best from the two Churches, even those by 
whose labor they were founded. 

BRAVE CHRISTIANS. 

"The governor had openly ordered us all to be sought for. Thus among 
the seized were some of our heathen slaves, who by Satan's impulse and at the 
suggestion of the soldiers, fear- 
ing the torture, accused us of 
eating human flesh, and of un- 
natural vices, such as are not fit 
to be mentioned or imagined, and 
ousrht not to be believed of man- 

o 

kind. At this all were incensed 
even to madness, so that our 
relatives and former friends 
raged against us. Now was our 
Lord's word fulfilled, 'Whoso- 
ever killeth you will think he 
doeth God service.' 

"The holy martyrs now 
endured tortures beyond descrip- 
tion ; Satan laboring by this 
means to extort slanders upon 
the faith. The whole fury of 
the multitude, the governor, and 
the soldiers was spent especially 
on Sanctus of Vienna, the deacon ; 
on Maturus, a late convert, but a 
mighty wrestler in the spirit ; on 
Attalus of Pergamus, a man who 
had always been the pillar and 
support of our Church; and 
lastly, on Blandina, in whom Christ showed that things which appear con- 
temptible to men are most honorable before God, through love to His name, 
exhibited in real energy, and not in boasting and pretence. For while we all 
feared, — and in particular her mistress in the flesh, herself one of the noble 




STAIRCASE IN THS PALACE OF CALIGULA. 



no THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

army of martyrs, — that she would not be able to witness a good confession, because 
of the weakness of her frame, Blandina [a slave] was endued with such fortitude, 
that those who successively tortured her from morniug to night were worn out 
with fatigue, and avowed themselves conquered, and their apparatus of torment 
exhausted. These were amazed to see her still breathing, while her body was 
torn and laid open ; they said that any single species of the torture would have 
been sufficient to dispatch her, much more so great a variety as had been applied. 
But the blessed woman, like a generous wrestler, gained fresh vigor in the act of 
confession ; and it was evidently a refreshment, a support, and an annihilation of 
all her pains to say, 'I am a Christian, and no evil is committed among us.' 

"Meantime the impious hoped to extort from the deacon Sanctus, through 
the intensity and duration of his pangs, something injurious to the Gospel. 
But he, bearing barbarous cruelties in a manner more than human, resisted 
so firmly that he would neither tell his name nor origin, nor whether he was a 
freeman or a slave, but to every question answered in Latin, 'I am a Christian.' 
This, he repeatedly professed, was to him name, and state, and race, and 
everything ; and nothing else could the heathen draw from him. Hence the 
rage of the governor and of the torturers was so fiercely turned against this 
holy man, that after exhausting all the usual modes of torment, they fastened 
red-hot brazen plates to the tenderest parts of his body. Yet he remained 
inflexible, being, no doubt, bedewed and refreshed by the fountain of living 
water which flows from Christ. His outward man indeed bore tokens of the 
ghastly tortures he had sustained, being one continued wound and bruise, 
contorted, and scarce retaining the human form. In him the view of Christ 
suffering wrought wonders, confounded the adversary, and showed, to encourage 
the rest, that nothing is to be feared where the Father's love is, and nothing 
painful where Christ's glory is shown forth. For while the impious imagined, 
when after some days they renewed his torture, that a fresh application of 
the same treatment to his wounds, now swollen and inflamed, must either 
overcome his constancy, or by dispatching him strike terror into the rest ; so 
far was this from true, that his body recovered its- natural position under the 
second course of torture ; he was restored to his former shape and to the use 
of his limbs ; so that, by Christ's grace, this cruelty proved not a punishment 
but a cure. 

"One of those who had denied Christ was Biblias, a woman. The devil, 
supposing her now his meat, and desiring to increase her condemnation by 
inducing her to accuse the Christians falsely, led her to the torture, and forced 
her, as a weak and timorous creature, to charge us with horrid impieties. But 
in her torment she came to herself and awoke as out of a deep slumber, being 
admonished by a temporal punishment of the danger of eternal fire. To the 
anger of the impious she cried, 'How can we eat infants — we, to whom the 




in 



ii2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

blood of beasts is not lawful?' She now professed herself a Christian, and 
was added to the army of martyrs. 

"The power of Christ, exerted in the patience of His people, had over- 
come the usual artifices of torment, and the devil was driven to new devices. 
Christians were thrust into the darkest and most noisome parts of the prison ; 
their feet were distended in a wooden crank, even to the fifth hole ; and in 
this situation they bore all that fiendish malice could inflict. Hence many, 
whom the Lord was pleased thus to take to Himself, were suffocated in prison. 
The rest, though so afflicted as to seem scarce capable of recovery under the 
kindest treatment, destitute as they were of earthly help and support, yet 
remained alive, strengthened by the Lord. 

"Some young persons, who had lately been seized, and whose bodies, 
never before exercised in suffering, were unequal to the severity of their con- 
finement, died. The blessed Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, in age above ninety 
years, and very infirm and asthmatic, yet strong in spirit and panting for 
martyrdom, was dragged before the tribunal. His body worn out with age 
and disease, he yet retained a soul through which Christ might triumph. 
While the multitude shouted against him as if he were Christ Himself, he 
made a good confession : the governor asking him who was the God of the 
Christian, he answered, 'If you are worthy, you shall know.' He was then 
unmercifully pulled about, and bore a variety of ill usage. Those who were 
near insulted him with their hands and feet, without the least respect to his 
age, and those at a distance threw at him whatever came to hand. Every 
one regarded himself as lacking in zeal, if he did not abuse him in one way 
or another; for they fancied that they thus avenged the cause of their gods. 
He was thrown into prison almost breathless, and after two days he expired. 

"A singular dispensation of Providence, and the vast compassion of Jesus 
for His own, appeared in this. Many who, when first taken, had denied their 
Saviour, profited nothing thereby, but were shut up in prison and suffered 
dreadful severities ; while those who confessed were confined as Christians, 
and on no other charge. Now the former, as -murderers and incestuous 
wretches, were punished much' more than the others, who besides were sup- 
ported by the joy of martyrdom, and the hope of the promises, and the love 
of Christ, and the Spirit of the Father. The lapsed were oppressed with the 
pangs of guilt, so that, while they were dragged along, their very faces marked 
them for what they were. But the faithful walked with cheerful step : their 
countenances shone with grace and glory : their bonds were as ornaments, 
and they as brides in rich array, breathing the fragrance of Christ. The 
apostates went on dejected, spiritless, forlorn, disgraced, insulted by the heathen 
as cowards, and treated as murderers : they had lost the precious, the glorious, 
the soul-reviving Name. Others, observing these things, were confirmed in the 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. n 3 

faith; when arrested, they confessed at once, nor admitted the suggestion of 
the tempter for a moment. 

BLANDINA'S TRIUMPH. 

'The martyrs were put to death in various ways ; in other words, they wore 

a chaplet of varying odors and flowers, and presented it to the Father. It became 

God' s wisdom 

and goodness _ \>s'.S5 .*•--..*. *^^rf4^*.'*'^H*2«N.- 

to appoint that 

His servants, 

after enduring 

a great and 

manifold con- 
test, should as 

victors receive 

the crown of 

immortality. 

Maturus, Sanc- 

tus, Blandina, 

and Attalus 
were offered to 
wild beasts in 
the amphithea- 
tre, in the com- 
mon spectacle 
of heathen in- 
humanity. 

"One ex- 
traordinary day 
of the shows 
being afforded 
the people on 
our account, 
Maturus and 
Sanctus were 
dealt with as 
if they had suf- 
fered nothing- 
before, — like 

those wrestlers fountain of fgeria. 

who, having already won several combats, are obliged to contend afresh with 
other conquerors, till some one overcomes all, and so is crowned. As they were 




nai 



114 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

led to the amphitheatre, they bore the blows inflicted on the condemned : they 
were exposed to be dragged and torn by the beasts, to all the barbarities which 
the mad populace with shouts exacted, and above all to the hot iron chair, whence 
came the shocking odor of their roasting flesh. But not a word could be drawn 
from Sanctus, beyond his frequent 'I am a Christian.' Only after long torments 
were these faithful gladiators released by death. 

"Blandina, suspended to a stake in the form of a cross, and occupied in con- 
stant prayer, was offered to the beasts, which at that time would not touch her. 
The combatants, beholding Christ crucified in the person of their sister in the 
faith, were inspired with new alacrity. She was taken down, thrown again into 
prison, and reserved for a future contest. Weak and despicable as she might 
appear, grace made her a mighty champion. 

"The multitude vehemently called for Attalus, who was a person of great 
repute among us. He advanced with cheerful serenity, an experienced believer, 
ever ready and active in bearing testimony to the Truth. He was led round the 
amphitheatre, and a tablet carried before him, 'This is Attalus the Christian.' 
The rage of the people would have had him killed at once ; but the governor, 
hearing that he was a Roman citizen, sent him back to prison, and wrote to the 
emperor for instructions as to him and others who could plead the same privilege. 

" This occasioned an interval which was of benefit to the Church. The pity 
of Christ appeared in the patience of many. Dead members were restored to life 
through the living, the martyrs (by example and persuasion) being true helpers 
to the lapsed. Thus the Church rejoiced to receive her children returning to her 
bosom ; for by these means most of those who had denied Christ were recovered. 
They felt again the divine life in their souls ; their God, who wills not the death 
of a sinner, was again precious to them, and they desired a fresh trial, wherein 
they might not fall, but stand. 

"Caesar sent orders that the confessors of Christ should be put to death, and 
apostates set free. It was now the annual assembly at Lyons, frequented from 
all parts, and the prisoners were again exposed. Roman citizens were to be 
beheaded, the rest to be offered to wild beasts. Now was the Redeemer magni- 
fied in those who had lapsed. They were questioned apart from the others, as 
persons soon to be dismissed ; to the surprise of the heathen, they confessed, and 
were added to the list of martyrs. A few remained in apostasy ; they were such 
as had no spark of faith, no knowledge of the riches of Christ, no fear of God ? 
whose lives had brought reproach on the gospel and showed them to be children 
of perdition. 

"During the examination of the lapsed, there stood near the tribunal a physi- 
cian named Alexander, a Phrygian by birth but long resident in France, known 
for his love of God and zeal for Truth. His face showed his sorrow for the apos- 
tates, and his gestures encouraged them to confess the faith. The crowd, angered 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



"5 



"by what they saw and heard, cried out against Alexander, as the cause of this 
change in many. 'Who are }^ou?' the governor inquired. 'A Christian,' he 
replied. The next day he suffered with Attalus, who to please the people was 
again exposed to the torments of the amphitheatre. Seated in the iron chair, 
the smell of his scorching flesh piercing the nostrils of the spectators, Attalus 
said to them : ' Ye are the devourers of men ; we do not that, nor any other wick- 
edness.' Some one asked him for the divine name: he answered, 'God has not 
a name as men have.' Alexander uttered neither word nor groan. Thus, having 
sustained a very grievous conflict, these heroes of the faith expired. 

"Blandina, with Ponticus, a boy 
of fifteen, had been daily brought to 

see the punishment of the rest : on the 

last day of the spectacles, they were 

led forward and ordered to swear by the 

gods. Incensed by their refusal, the 

crowd showed no pity to sex or tender 

age. The whole round of barbarities 

was inflicted ; but menaces and pangs 

were alike in vain. The heathen saw 

with fury the maiden strengthening 

and comforting the child, who, after a 

magnanimous exertion of patience, 

gave up the ghost. 

"And now the blessed Blandina, 

last of all, as a generous mother having 

exhorted her children and sent them 

before her victorious to the King, re- 
viewing the whole series of their suffer- 
ings, hastened to undergo the same, 

rejoicing and triumphing in her exit, 

as if invited to a marriage-supper, not 

going to the teeth and claws of beasts. 

After she had endured stripes, the tear- 
ing of the animals, and the iron chair, 

she was enclosed in a net and thrown to a bull ; having been tossed for some 

time, and proving superior to her pains, she at length breathed out her soul. 

Her enemies admitted that no woman among them had ever suffered such and 

so great inflictions. 

"Their rage iiot yet satisfied, they began a peculiar war against the corpses 

of the saints. Disappointment increased their fury ; the devil, the governor, 

and the mob equally showed their malice ; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, 




ANCIENT ARMOR. 



n6 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



'He that is unjust, let him be unjust still,' as well as, 'He that is holy, let him 
he holy still.' They now exposed to dogs the bodies of those who had died in 
prison, and watched carefully night and day, lest any of us should by stealth 
perform the funeral rites. And then, collecting what had been left by the wild 
beasts or the fire, relics partly torn or scorched, and the heads with the trunks, 
they kept them unburied under a military guard. Some gnashed on them with 
their teeth, as if to make them feel more of their malice. Others laughed and. 
insulted them, praising the vengeance of their gods upon our martyrs. Even 
those of a gentler spirit, who had some sympathy with us, upbraided us, often 

saying, 'Where is their God, 
and what profit do they get 
from their religion, which they 
valued above life ? Now let us 
see if their God can help them 
to rise again.' 

"Our sorrow was increased 
by being forbidden to inter our 
friends. Neither through dark- 
ness, nor by prayers or pay- 
ment, could we prevail. The 
bodies, having been exposed 
and insulted for six days, were 
burned to ashes and scattered, 
by the wicked into the Rhone, 
that not the least particle of 
them might remain on earth. 
These things they did as if 
they could prevail against God 
and prevent the resurrection 
of the j ust, and that they might 
turn others, as they said, from 
the hope of a future life." 

In this recital of atrocious 
cruelty and amazing endur- 
ance, several points are to be 
remarked. Though the viru- 
lence of the mob may have been 
equal in both cities, the perse- 
christians attacked by a mob. cution was more ferocious here 

than at Smyrna, where the chief magistrate, Quadratus, bore no enmity to the 
Christians, and perhaps regarded their punishment as an unpleasant duty ; while 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 117 

the governor at Lyons, by some thought to be that Septimius Severus who after- 
wards attained the throne, showed the temper and manners of a savage. By 
Roman custom the populace were entitled, in lieu of liberty, to their amuse- 
ments, the horrid sports of the circus ; but the usual deference to their wishes 
was never carried to a more scandalous length than in allowing them to select 
their victims, and in heaping especial torments upon women and old men who 
had chanced to arouse their capricious fury. 

The lack of anything like decency or moderation in the proceedings at 
Xyons was matched, as it must seem to us, by a lack of intelligence in those 
who conducted them. Sensible pagans did not believe the Christians guilty of 
incest, cannibalism, and other secret enormities ; yet to obtain confessions or 
accusations to this effect appeared to be the chief object of the prosecution. A 
mere charge, unsupported by any evidence, was enough ; those who denied 
Christ, sacrificed to the gods, and did everything that was required of them, 
instead of being released according to precedent and common sense, were locked 
up and roughly treated, until the emperor's order came for their discharge. The 
stupidity of the local authorities went still further to defeat their ends, by allow- 
ing the confessors free access to the lapsed in their common confinement ; by 
this means, as we have seen, most of the apostates were induced to return to the 
fold, and the government lost the greater part of what little it had gained. 

Very notable also was the temper of the faithful under these sharp and 
heavy trials. The spirit which upheld them was not, as the stoical emperor and 
many others fancied, one of fanatical pride and obstinacy, but of love and meek- 
ness. They had no angry reproaches for their tormentors, whom they regarded 
as mistaken men, deceived and enslaved by the common enemy. Careful of 
what was entrusted to them, they judged not the alien and the injurious. The 
answer of Pothinus, "If thou art worthy, thou, shalt know," is among the noblest 
ever given by the defenseless to the mighty. Toward each other these sufferers 
were models of considerate tenderness. One of them, named Alcibiades, pro- 
fessed an ascetic life, and in the prison kept to his accustomed diet of bread and 
water only. It was revealed in a dream or vision to Attalus, after his first 
public contest in the amphitheatre, that this habit of his friend might be offen- 
sive to the brethren, and so was unacceptable to the Lord. On hearing this, 
Alcibiades gave up his chosen custom, and for the short time he had yet to live 
ate thankfully whatever was set before him. 

Most touching and impressive is the humility of those who survived their 
first torments. Their friends, properly enough, applied to them the name 
martyr, which at first meant merely a witness ; and they certainly had borne 
noble witness to the Gospel. But they would not have it. "If any of us by 
word or letter gave them the title, they reproved us vehemently." Emaciated, 
bruised, bleeding, crippled, half dead with wounds, they said, "He is the faithful 



n8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



and true witness, the First-Begotten from the dead. And they indeed are 
martyrs whom Christ has deigned to receive to Himself in their confession, seal- 
ing their testimony by their deaths. But we are poor and lowly confessors." 
With tears they begged the brethren to pray fervently for them, that they 
might be perfected. 

Here perhaps began the distinction, afterwards universally recognized, 
between martyrs, those who have died for the faith, and confessors, those who 
risk their lives, without losing them, in the same cause. 

Shortly after these horrors, an isolated 
martyrdom occurred at iEdui, now Autun, 
at no great distance from Lyons. The 
Christians were not numerous in those 
parts, and had received no official atten- 
tion, when Symphorianus, a young man 
of rank, brought himself into notice. A 
festival of Cybele was in pro- 
gress, and her image carried 
about, when he refused to fall 
on his knees with the rest, and 
dropped some words about the 
folly of idolatry. He was ac- 
cused as a seditious person and 
a disturber of worship, before 
the governor, Heraclius, who 
said, "I suppose you are a 
Christian. You must have 
escaped our notice, for there 
are but few followers of this 
sect here." The youth re- 
plied, "I am: I pray to the true God, who rules in heaven. But I cannot 
pray to idols: nay, if I could, I would dash them* down." He was adjudged 
guilty of crimes against the laws and religion of the state, and sentenced to 
lose his head. As he was led to execution, his mother called out, " My son, 
keep the living God in thy heart. Fear not death, which leads direct to life. 
Lift up thy heart, and look to Him who rules on high. Thy life is not taken 
from thee to-day, but thou art conducted to a better. By a blessed exchange 
thou wilt pass this day to heaven." 

Though the experience of Lyons may have been exceptional in its. 
severity, we are not to suppose that it was unique. On the contrary, as 
Eusebius says, from the details in the letter that has been cited we may 
judge of the fierceness of persecution in other parts of the empire. For one 




t; s^3^?r~ gsg | 



EtAGABALUS. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



119 



martyr whose record has come down to us, there may have been hundreds, 
or perhaps thousands, whose names, though written in heaven, are forgotten on 
earth. 

Commodus, the son of Marcus, like him in face and form, but his oppo- 
site in every trait of character, reigned from 180 to 192. He had a mistress, 
Marcia, who, from whatever reason, favored the Christians : to this ignoble 
cause they owed comparative security. A senator, Apollonius, was accused 
by a slave, avowed himself a believer, and was executed by a decree of the 
Senate, as was also his accuser: and Arrius, the proconsul of Asia Minor, 
began a persecution on his own account, but was deterred by the multitude 
of Christians who flocked to his tribunal for that purpose, and invited them to 
hang themselves. With these events Commodus had little or no connection. 
It is the irony of history that the religion of purity and love should have 
suffered so much under the purest and gentlest of rulers, and enjoyed almost 
complete immunity under a worthless tyrant. 




NERO. 




CHAPTER VII. 

SEVERUS AND MAXIMIN. 



N those days the Church was never wholly free 
from trouble; the "ten great persecutions" indi- 
cate merely the periods when she suffered most. 
If there were no new edicts, the old ones were 
still in force ; if an emperor was favorable or 
indifferent, his subordinates, in distant parts of 
the world, might be led astray by their own zeal 
or by popular clamor. Irenaeus, who testifies that 
under Commodus the Christians might travel 
where they pleased and were much at court, says 
also that at all times martyrs were ascending to 
heaven. Clement of Alexandria, writing toward 
the end of the second century, said, " We see daily 
many burned, crucified, and beheaded before our eyes." 

Septimius Severus, who reigned from A. D. 193 to 211, had a Christian 
slave named Proculus, who cured him of an illness. This man's influence, 
according to Tertullian, made the emperor indulgent for some years ; but in 
202 he enacted a law forbidding conversions to Christianity under heavy 
penalties. The so-called fifth persecution, which might apparently be assigned 
to this date, was already raging so fiercely in parts of Africa that, as Euse- 
bius says, the sufferings of the faithful were thought to be a sign of the speedy 
coming of Antichrist. In some places the churches had been able to pur- 
chase permission for the free exercise of their worship ; but this, Neander 
thinks, might easily open to the officials a new way of enriching themselves, 
by threatening or enforcing the terrors of the law. Others thought this 
making terms with the heathen an unworthy and base compliance. 

In the year 200 Saturninus, proconsul at Carthage, had before him in Scil- 
lita, a town of Numidia, (which is now the eastern part of Algeria), nine men and 
three women, to whom he promised the emperor's pardon, if they would "return to 
their senses, and observe the ceremonies." To him Speratus said, "We have 
wronged no man by word or deed: nay, we pray for those who injure us, and 
praise our Lord for all." The governor oberved, "We too have a religion, and a 

simple one. We swear by the genius of the emperor, and pray for his welfare, 

(120) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



121 



as you too ought to do." "If you will listen," said Speratus, "I will explain to 
you our doctrine." The governor answered, "Shall I hear you speak ill of our 
worship? Swear, all of you, by the genius of the emperor, that you may enjoy 
life and its pleasures." But the Christian said, "I know no genius of the 
emperor. I serve God, Who is in heaven, Whom no man hath seen nor can see. 
I have done no wrong : I obey the laws ; I pay my dues and taxes ; I worship the 
King of kings. I have complained of none, and none ought to make complaints 
against me." The proconsul turned to the others, saying, "Do not imitate this 
man's folly, but fear our prince and obey him." Cittinus answered, "We fear 
only the Lord our God, Who is in heaven." Thereupon they were sent to prison. 
The next day Saturninus, thinking that the women might be more easily 
persuaded, said to them, "Honor the king, and do not sacrifice to the gods." 
Donata replied, "We honor Caesar as Caesar, but we offer prayer and worship to 
the Lord." Said Vestina, "I too am a Christian; this my heart shall ever say, 
and my lips repeat." Secunda added, "And I no less believe in my God, and 
will be true to Him." The proconsul now 
called for the men, and asked Speratus, "Are 
you still determined?" "I am. Let all hear: 
I am a Christian." The others said, "We also 
are Christians." The governor, not liking the 
bad business thrust upon him, offered such re- 
monstrance as he could. "Will you 
neither consider your danger nor ac- 
cept mercy?" They answered, "Do 
what you will : we are glad to die for 
Christ." Anxious to defer the sent- 
ence, he inquired, "What are your 
sacred books?" "The four gospels 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the epistles 
of the Apostle St. Paul, and all the 
scripture inspired of God." "I will 
give you three days to reflect and 
come to a better mind." But Spe- 
ratus said, "I am a Christian, and so 




SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS. 



are all these with me. We will never quit the faith of our Lord Jesus. Do, 
then, as you. think fit." 

In this extremity the governor was helpless. If he followed the dictates of 
compassion, and let these contumacious persons go free, he would be violating 
the laws, and liable to accusation at Rome. So he said, " Speratus, Narzales, 
Cittinus, Veturius, Felix, Acyllinus, Loetantius, Januarius, Generosus, Vestina, 
Donata, and Secunda, having acknowledged themselves to be Christians, and 



122 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



refused to pay due honors to the emperor, I command their heads to be cut off." 
On this they gave thanks, and again, kneeling, at the place of execution. "And 
the Lord," says the chronicle, "received His martyrs in peace." 

Few magistrates were as merciful as this Saturninus, who endeavored to 
save the lives of his prisoners, and failing, sentenced them to the simplest and 
most expeditious punishment, refusing to add any of the torments which were 
usually so familiar. By this time it was understood that so much, and no more, 




RUINS OF CASINO MINERVA. 



was required of a governor, in cases where the accused confessed their faith. 
Tertullian, in a letter to the proconsul Scapula, cited by Neander, tells him that 
" he might fulfil all the law exacted from his office, without indulging in cruelty, 
if he would use only the sword against the Christians, as the governors of Mauri- 
tania and of Leon in Spain were in the habit of doing." 

PERPETUA FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH. 

More harrowing and far more famous than the tale of Speratus and his 
friends is that of Vivia Perpetua, a lady of rank, who with four young catechu- 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



123 



mens (persons under instruction, and not yet admitted to communion), two of 
them slaves, Felicitas and Revocatus, was arrested at Carthage in the year 202. 
She was but twenty-two, and tenderly reared ; she had an infant at the breast, a 
husband, a Christian mother, and a pagan father who was utterly unable to 
comprehend her scruples ; but all these ties, the force of which she keenly felt, 
could not induce her to value life when placed in the balance against her faith. 
To her aged father's entreaties to recant, she replied by pointing to a vessel in 
the room, and saying, " Can that be called anything else than what it is ? No 
more can I be given any other name than Christian." 




THE ARREST OF PERPETOA. 

The ministers of the Church, who were most faithful in visiting prisoners 
during the persecutions, often purchasing that privilege from the jailers, and 



124 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



risking their lives in doing so, found means to baptize these catechumens during 
their first confinement. "The Spirit prompted me," said Perpetua, "to ask at 
my baptism nothing else than patience." A few days later they were cast into 
the dungeon. " I was terrified," she said, " because I had never before been in 
such darkness. Oh, what a wretched day ! The stifling heat from the crowd of 
prisoners, the rude treatment we suffered from the soldiers, and above all, my 
anxiety for my child ! " 

The deacons who ministered to them and brought them the consecrated 
elements, by a judicious use of money, procured better quarters for the confes- 
sors, or at least permission to leave the dungeon for some hours together. 
When Perpetua's mother brought her baby to receive its natural food, " the 
prison became a palace." In the night a dream or vision encouraged her to 
•endure all. 




THE MARTYR'S DREAM. 



Her father, who had at first been angry at her- obstinacy, was now bowed 
down with grief, alike through natural affection and terror at the disgrace her 
execution would bring upon the family. As the time for her trial drew near, he 
cried, " My daughter, pity my gray hairs ! Pity your father, if he ever was 
worthy of the name ! I have brought you up to the bloom of your age ; I have 
loved you above your brothers ; give me not up to such shame among men ! 
Look on your mother and your aunt : have pity on your boy, who cannot 
survive you. Lay aside your proud spirit, lest you destroy us all ; for not one 
of us can hold up his head, if you come to such an end." The old man threw 
himself at her feet, he kissed her hands, he called her his mistress — but all in 
vain. Perpetua "lamented that he alone, of all her family, would not rejoice in 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



I2 5 



lier sufferings." She said to him, "When I stand before the tribunal, God's 
will must be done. We rely not on our own strength, but on His." 

The next day, when the prisoners were brought into court, he came with 
his little grandson to renew his entreaties. The procurator, Hilarion, added 
his entreaties: "Take pity on your father's gray hairs, have pity on your 
tender child : offer sacrifice for the prosperity of Caesar." Perpetua said simply, 
"That I cannot do." "Are you a Christian?" "I am." When the old man 
heard his daughter sentenced to the wild beasts, he uttered a cry, threw his 
arms about her neck, and in a frenzy tried to drag her away. Hilarion directed 
one of the attendants to strike him with a staff: Perpetua felt the blow as 
if it fell on her own flesh. 

They returned to the prison rejoicing ; and there one of the men, Secun- 
dulus, died. Felicitas, the young slave, was about to become a mother, and 
feared lest her child should perish unborn. Her companions prayed for her, 
and she was delivered shortly before the horrid "sports" of the arena came 
on. Her pains were violent : the jailer said, "If 
3'ou can scarcely bear this, what will you do when 
cast before the beasts ? " She answered, "What I 
bear now, I endure alone ; but then Another will 
suffer for me, because I shall be suffering for 
Him." The child was given to a Christian rela- 
tive, who reared it as her own. 

As was too often the case, they had 
been roughly handled and half starved 
in prison, till the calm Perpetua said to 
the officer, "Will it not be for your credit 
that we should appear well fed at the 
spectacles?" This suggestion procured 
them relief. 

In accordance with a custom which 
may have come down from the days when 
human sacrifices were offered to Baal, it 
was intended to clothe the male victims as priests of Saturn, and the women 
in the dress belonging to priestesses of Ceres. But they refused to wear these 
pagan garments, saying, "We have come to this end of our own will, that we 
might retain our freedom. We give up our lives that we might not be com- 
pelled to these practices." The justice of this objection was admitted, and 
the martyrs were not thus disguised. To the procurator they said, "Thou 
judgest us, and God shall judge thee." 

After being scourged, Perpetua and Felicitas were stripped naked, and 
put into nets to be exposed to a wild cow. But it seems that some of the 




126 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

spectators had decency enough to be offended at this treatment of a lady of 
rank and beauty, and a mother lately delivered ; so the executioner drew 
them from the nets and gave them loose clothing. Perpetua was first attacked 
and overthrown: seeing her garment torn by the beast's horns, her native 
modesty impelled her to pull it together as well as she could, and to put up 
her disordered hair. Then, noticing Felicitas unable to rise, she lifted her to 
her feet. "I wonder," she said, "when they will expose us to the cow?" for 
she was unconscious of what had passed, till they showed her the blood flow- 
ing from her wounds.' She called her brother, and exhorted him and the rest, 
saying "Continue firm in the faith ; love one another ; and be not alarmed 
nor offended by what we endure." 

None of the confessors having been killed in the first contest, the people 
clamored for their death. They gave each other the last kiss, and advanced to 
meet the executioners. The others expired silently ; but Perpetua fell into the 
hands of an unskilful gladiator, — probably a slave who disliked and was confused 
by his horrid office, — who wounded her in the side. She cried out at the pain: 
then, recovering her self-command, she guided his trembling hand to her throat 
and passed to her reward. Her story has profoundly impressed believers in all 
ages. Two hundred years after her death, St. Augustine, the greatest of the 
Latin fathers, cited Perpetua as an example of divine love prevailing over the 
natural affections, and devoted three sermons to her memory and that of her 
companions. 

Other African martyrs of this period, according to Tertullian, were Rutilius, 
who after many tortures was committed to the flames, and Mavilus of Adrumelum, 
who was torn by wild beasts. Eusebius and other writers mention the deaths at 
Alexandria of Leonides, father of the famous Origen, who was beheaded ; of Plu- 
tarch, Heraclides, Hero, two men named Serenus, Rhais, and Marcella, whom 
Origen is said to have instructed in his youth ; and of Basilides, who from an 
executioner became a believer. These matters are doubtful ; but it is certain 
that many suffered in Egypt during the reign of Septimius Severus. 

The death of Irenseus, bishop of Lyons from 177, is usually placed about 
the year 202. Some think that .he perished in a local persecution similar to that 
which he had survived twenty-five years before ; but the manner as well as the 
date of his departure is in obscurity. He was one of the most eminent authors 
of the early Church ; but though some of his writings survive, we know next to 
nothing of his life. 

Septimius, an able ruler, was succeeded by his ruffianly son Caracalla (212- 
217), a fratricide, who was credited with piercing through his mother's hand to 
reach the heart of his brother Geta, that he might enjoy the throne without a part- 
ner. The slave of violent passions, he shed much blood, but showed no special 
animosity against the Christians. The wretched Elagabalus (218-222) was but 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



127 



seventeen when the soldiers slew him. He cared nothing for the Roman consti- 
tution, and delighted to introduce the religions of his native Syria, with all their 
vile impurities. Naturally, he was no persecutor. His successor, Alexander 
Severus (222-235), was upright, humane, and studious, with novel ideas of his 
own — ideas of eclecticism and tolerance. He knew something of Christianity, 
and respected it so much that he introduced the bust of its Founder, with those of 
Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana, into his private chapel, among the old gods of 
Rome. He favored the Church, and gave it a piece of ground to build on in the 
capital. Therefore the tale of Calapodius being drowned in the Tiber, and others 
at Rome more formally executed, for refusing to sacrifice, would seem to be either 
an error, or wrongly dated. Yet it is possible that Henry of Lyons, Narcissus 
of Jerusalem, and some others, may have perished under local oppressions at the 
beginning of this reign. Ulpian, the jurist, collected the rescripts of former 
emperors against the Christians, though these were then in abeyance. 

A BARBARIAN ON THE THRONE. 

Maximin, a Thracian savage, reached the throne by the murder of his 
master. He had won his place in the army by wrestling, and risen by sheer 
physical force and brute courage. Eight feet in height and of enormous 
strength, he could draw loaded wagons, crumble stones in his fingers, pull up 
trees by the roots, and break a horse's leg 
with a blow. The popular abhorrence 
credited him with the daily consumption 
of seven gallons of wine and thirty pounds 
of meat. When he heard that the Senate 
had decided against him, his howls of rage 
are said to have been rather those of a beast 
than of a man. From such a monarch no 
mercy could be expected ; and during his 
brief reign (235-238) the Christians in 
several districts, especially in Asia Minor, 
suffered much from the popular fury, 
aroused by earthquakes. It is said that 
some sixty persons of note thus perished, 
and that several thousands were locked up 
in their assemblies, and so burned, refusing 
to save their lives by idolatrous compliance. 
This is called the Sixth Persecution; but 
it was not general. Neander says that 
"though less severe than those of former 
times, it made a greater impression, be- 
cause the long interval of repose had left men unprepared to expect hostilities." 




ROMAN" SHIELDS. 



128 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



The amiable and ill-fated Gordian (238-244) was not a ruler to be feared by 
any ; and Philip the Arab (244-249) did nothing against the Church. Eusebius 
indeed says that he was a Christian, and on attempting at Easter-eve to enter a 
Church, the bishop (probably Babylus of Antioch) met him at the door and 
refused to admit him till he had done penance for his crimes, by which was 




STREET SCENE IN ASIA MINOR. 



meant the murder of his predecessor. Whatever his sentiments, he conformed 
outwardly to the heathen rites and customs, and his coins bear pagan emblems. 
In his reign the thousandth anniversary of the founding of Rome was celebrated 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



129 



with great pomp. But the republic was a remote memory, and the empire had 
seen its best days. Eaten up by its own corruptions and cruelties, the old 
Roman system was failing fast, that on its ruins, after many centuries, might 
rise the edifice of a new and milder civilization. 

TESTIMONY OF ORIGEN. 

Origen, the ablest Christian teacher of that period, writing in Palestine 
toward the close of Philip's reign, makes some important comments on the 
history, condition, and prospects of the new faith in its conflicts with an unbe- 
lieving world : 

"Although the Christians, who were commanded not to defend themselves 
by violence against their enemies, obeyed this tender and humane precept ; yet 
what they never could have obtained, had they been allowed to use the arm of 
flesh, they have received from God, who has always fought for them. He has 
restrained such as oppressed them and would extirpate their religion. As a warn- 
ing to them, when they saw some contend for their faith, that they might become 
stronger, and despise death, a few (so 
few that they may easily be numbered*) 
have at times suffered for Christ. Thus 
God has prevented a war of extermina- 
tion against the whole Church ; for He 
wished His people to endure, He desired 
the earth to be filled with their salu- 
tary and most holy doctrine. And 
that the weaker might take breath 
and be relieved from fear, He cared 
for His own, by so scattering the 
assaults upon them that neither em- 
peror, nor governor, nor the multitude, 
should further prevail against them." 

As to his own times he says : "God 
has caused the number of Christians 
steadil}- to increase, and has already 
given them the free exercise of their 
religion, though a thousand obstacles 
opposed its propagation. But since He 
willed that it should become a blessing 
to the Gentiles, all the assaults of men 
have come to shame. And the more the Caesars, the governors, and the multi- 
tude have sought to oppress us, the more peaceful have we become." He goes 

* This does not agree with the statements of Clement and Irenaeus. 




ARCHWAY ON MOUNT SINAI. 



rn 



130 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



on to observe that though many well-born, well-placed, and well-to-do have been 
baptized, there are those who still abhor the faithful and believe the slanders 
against them. Though he is sure that the gospel will finally prevail, he foresees 
further and heavier persecutions, as outgrowths of the opinion that seditions and 
other public calamities arise from the decay of the state religion and the growth 
of the Church. "While God wills, we enjoy peace in a world which hates us. 
As the Master has overcome the world, so may we by His power. But if He wills 
that we should again battle for the faith, let the adversaries come : we can do all 
things through Him that strengthens us." 




MARCUS AUREJLIUS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



DECIUS AND THE SEVENTH PERSECUTION. 



HE foresight of Origen was soon justified 
by the event ; the two years of Traj an 
Decius (249-251) were the bitterest the 
Church in general had yet known. 
An effort, more intelligent and sys- 
tematic than any before, was made to 
crush the society, chiefly by removing 
her leading men. 

Too many writers have thought 
/ it necessary to judge the Roman 

lers, not by their characters and motives, but 
their attitude toward organized Christianity : 
lis Constantine is exalted, while Julian, vastly 
3 superior in high-mindedness and purity of 
is held accurst. We need not repeat this 
error. The serious and conscientious Emperors 
(and there were several such) acted from politi- 
motives and from a stern sense of duty. They bore the 
,-eight of a huge mass of tradition, and by this, however erroneous it may 
since have been proven, they felt bound to direct their actions. What seemed 
to them injurious to the state, they repressed with the hand of power; and the 
promptings of humanity, if recognized at all, were held as nothing beside 5 the 
public welfare. In our view they were hugely mistaken ; but the mistake was 
that of the entire ancient world, and of the system of ideas universally accepted, 
until it was overthrown by the might of Christ. 

Decius was of old Roman stock, a lover of the traditions of the republic, a 
hater of Eastern innovations. Descended, as he believed, from those illustrious 
plebeians who in remote ages had thrice sacrificed themselves for the state, he 
aimed to live as they had lived, and he made as heroic an end as they. A senator, 
he took with reluctance the highest post in the army, and by the army, then the 
real power of the empire, was forced to accept the throne. Gibbon, a historian 

(131) 





132 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



133 



always favorable to the pagans, calls him " an accomplished prince, who has 
deserved to be compared, both in life and death, with the brightest examples of 
ancient virtue." 

But ancient virtue was apt to have little humanity in it, and a ruler of the 
old severe type would stop at nothing with those whom he considered enemies of 
the state. Thus arose the terrible Seventh Persecution. 

"It did not begin," says Dionysius of Alexandria, "with the emperor's pro- 
clamation, but a full year before, when a certain soothsayer came to our city and 
stirred up the heathen against us. First they arrested a priest of ours, named 
Metras, and brought him forth to make him speak after their blasphemies : when 
he would not do this, they laid upon him with staves and clubs, and with sharp 
reeds pricked his face and eyes ; afterwards they took him out into the suburbs, 
and there stoned him to death. Then they took Quinta, a faithful woman, and 
led her to the temple of their gods, to compel her to worship with them ; when she 
refused, abhorring their idols, they bound her feet, and dragged her through the 
whole street of the city upon the rough stones ; and so, dashing her against walls, 
and scourging her with whips, brought her to the same place of the suburbs, where 
she likewise ended her life. This done, in a great tumult and with a multitude 
running together, they burst into the houses of the godly, spoiling, sacking, and 
carrying away all they could find of value ; the rest they took into the open market 
and burned. Meantime the brethren withdrew themselves, and took patiently the 
spoiling of their goods. 

"Among others that were seized was a woman well stricken in years, named 
Apollonia. They dashed out all her teeth, and made a great fire, threatening to 
cast her into it, unless she would blaspheme with them and deny Christ. At this 
she, pausing a little as one that would consider with herself, suddenly leaped into 
the midst of the fire, and there died. There was also one Serapion, whom they 
took in his own house; after they had assailed him with sundry kinds of torment, 
and broken almost all the joints of his body, the}- cast him down from an upper 
room, and so finished him. 

a No road, either private or public, was left for us to escape by day or night ; 
the people made an outcry against us, that, unless we uttered words of blasphemy, 
we should be drawn to the fire and burned. And these outrages endured for a 
time ; but at length, as the Lord willed, the wretches fell to dissension among 
themselves, which turned the cruelty they practiced against us upon their own 
heads. And so we had a little breathing-space, while the fury of the heathen was 
thus assuaged." s 

This, however destructive, was a mere popular outbreak. Alexandria was a 
disorderly city, given to violence and riots, which the authorities, when not them- 
selves threatened, took no great trouble to put down. Indeed, the mob had little 
reason to respect the law, for it set them no example of justice. The governors 



134 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



did what they could, on the urging of greed or malice ; and the Emperor Caracalla, 
visiting Egypt some years before this, had on small provocation ordered a bloody 
massacre, sending his troops into the streets to kill all whom they met. 

But the organized persecution of the Christians soon began ; their bishop r 
Dionysius, goes on to tell the tale. "The emperor's edict, as our Lord had fore- 
told, was so terrible as to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. All were 
astonished and dismayed: many of the richer sort came forward of their own 
accord ; some, who held posts under government, were obliged on that account to 
appear ; others were brought by their relatives or friends. As each of them was 




SERAPION ASSAILED AND KILLED IN HIS OWN HOUSE. 

called on by name, they drew near the unholy altars, some pale and trembling, not 
as if they were to perform sacrifice, but as if they were to be the victims slaughtered ; 
so that the crowd around jeered them, and it was plain that they were afraid either 
to die or to sacrifice. Others came boldly, saying that they had never been 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



i35 



Christians — fulfilling our Lord's words, ' How hardly shall they that have riches 
enter into the kingdom of God ! ' The rest partly followed the example of these ; 
some fled, and others were arrested. Among the latter some went no further 
than being chained ; some bore confinement for a few days, and then abjured the 




REMAINS OF THE TEMPLE AT ABYDOS. 

faith, even before they were brought to trial ; some, after enduring the tortures 
for awhile, gave in ; but the blessed and steadfast pillars of the Lord, being 
strengthened by Him, became true martyrs." 



MORE CRUELTIES. 



First among these faithful ones was Julian, a man afflicted with gout ; unable 
to walk, he was carried by two, one of whom at once denied Christ. The other, 



136 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Croniou, confessed with Julian ; they were placed on camels, led through the 
city, then scourged, and at last cast into a fire, in presence of a multitude. Besar, 
a soldier, lost his life for protecting them from the insults of the mob. Machar, 
a man from Western Africa, was burned; so were Epimachus and Alexander, 
who had borne long imprisonment and many torments ; and with them four 
women. Ammonarion, an aged deaconess, "was grievously tortured by the judge 
for having declared beforehand that she would not repeat the blasphemy which 
he ordered: she continued faithful, and was led away to execution." Her con- 
stancy was the means of procuring a more merciful death for several of her sisters 
in the faith ; for the magistrate, " ashamed of torturing them to no purpose, and 
of being baffled by women,''' ordered Mercusia, Dionysia, and others, to be simply 
beheaded. The men did not fare so easily : Heron, Ater, and Isidor, after cruel 
torments, perished in the fire. A boy of fifteen, Dioscurus, was examined with 
them, but showed such firmness under pain, and such wisdom in his answers, that 
the governor, for once relenting, set him free, giving his youth time for repent- 
ance ; and he, Dionysius adds, " is with us still, rescued to a greater and longer 
conflict." One Nemesian, falsely accused as a robber and truly as a Christian, 
after clearing himself of the first charge, was scourged and burned as a malefac- 
tor. Four of the guard in attendance at these trials, Amnion, Zeno, Ptolemy, 
and Ingenuus, gave open signs of disgust at the cowardice of one of the apostates, 
presently owned that they were Christians, and went joyfully to their death. 

Besides these martyrs of Alexandria, many in the smaller towns and rural 
parts of Egypt suffered, either by popular violence or by prosecution in the 
courts ; among them Iscyrion, agent to a magistrate, who, refusing to recant, was 
impaled. 

Dionysius himself, to whom we owe all these particulars, escaped in a 
singular wa} r , as he relates in one of his letters. Learning that he was to 
be arrested, he remained four days at home, while the officer sent after him 
searched diligently through " the roads, the river, and the fields, where he sus- 
pected I might be hid" — never thinking to look for the bishop in his house. Be- 
coming convinced that it was God's will he should seek to preserve his life, 
he went into the country with' his servants and many of the brethren. That 
evening they were all seized, and confined in a village. A friend, hearing of the 
arrest, fled in alarm and told the facts to a peasant whom he met. This man 
was on his way to a nuptial feast; arrived there, he repeated what he had heard 
to the company ; they rose with one accord, went to the place where the prisoners 
were under guard, and shouted with all their might. The soldiers were struck 
with panic and ran away. The rescuers, entering the house, found the bishop 
and his friends lying down. He, taking them for robbers, invited them to 
cut off his head and end the business. He was unwilling to escape ; they 
dragged him out, and by sheer force delivered him from his enemies. 




BESAR, THE SOLDIER. LOSES HIS LIFE TRYING TO PROTECT THE CHRISTIANS 



FROM THE MOB. 



137 



Il'l. 



138 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The cruelties practiced upon the faithful were now legalized. By the edict 
of Decius, A. D. 250, strict inquiry was to be made about persons suspected 
of disregarding the pagan rites. Christians were required to sacrifice, and if 
they refused, were to be threatened, tortured, and finally put to death. The 
persecution was especially directed against the bishop; and several of them, as 
Fabian of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, Alexander of Comaua, were executed. 
Others, like Dionysius, sought shelter from the storm, that they might be 
preserved for further service to their flocks. Among these were the famous 
Cyprian of Carthage, who thus explains his action : 

'' On the first approach of trouble, when the people, with loud outcries, 
constantly demanded my death, I retired for a time, not so much from care 
of my own life as for the safety of the brethren, that the tumult which had 
begun might not be further excited by my presence, which was offensive to 
the heathen The Lord commanded us to yield and fly in case of persecu- 
tion ; this He directed, and practiced it Himself. For as the martyr's crown 
comes by God's appointment, and can be received only in the fullness of time,, 
so he denies not the faith, who, remaining true to Christ, withdraws at need ; 
he only waits his time." His own time arrived a few years later. 

The absence of the bishop did not cause the persecution to abate at Carth- 
age. Numidius, a presbyter, having encouraged many to endure, saw his 
wife perish in the flames, and was himself left for dead, crushed and half 
burned. His daughter, seeking his body under a heap of stones, found signs 
of life: he revived, and was honored as a confessor. Others endured torments 
for eight days in prison, and were finally starved. A woman, brought to the 
altar by her pagan husband, had her hands tightly held, and was thus com- 
pelled to go through the form of sacrifice, but cried out, " I did it not ;•" strange to 
say, she was merely banished. 

At Smyrna, Eudemon the bishop, forgetful of the glorious example of his 
predecessor Polycarp, became an apostate. But Pionius a presbyter, well known 
and greatly respected, put a chain about his neck to show his willingness to 
suffer, and through long imprisonment and many pains witnessed a good con- 
fession, being at last nailed to the stake and burned. In Asia, Maximus, 
a merchant, exclaimed under torture, " These are not torments we suffer for' 
our Lord ; they are wholesome unctions." He was finally stoned. Another, 
having endured the rack and redhot plates, was smeared over with honey, and 
exposed under a semi-tropical sun to the stings of insects. A well known legend 
records the yet more fiendish device practiced against a well-made youth : he was 
tied with silken cords to a bed in a fair garden, and left to the wiles of a beautiful 
temptress. Anxious only to preserve the purity required by his religion, he bit 
off his tongue, that the pain and loss of the power of speech might protect him 
from temptation. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



*i9 



USES OF PERSECUTION. 



The pious Cyprian found a providential reason for all that believers had 
endured. "When the cause of the sjckness is once known, then the remedy may 




THE IBTS\ THE SACRED BIRD OF THE EGYPTIANS. 



be found. The Lord wished to prove His people, because the course of life which 
He commands had been destroyed in the long time of our tranquillity. There- 
fore a divine chastisement has roused the Church, fast sinking, as it then was, into 
careless slumber. Forgetting how the godly lived in the time of the apostles. 



»" . ' 



140 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



and how they ought always to live, men gave their hearts to the increase of their 
possessions on eanh. Many even of the bishops, who ought by word and example 
to lead their flocks, neglected their divine calling, and busied themselves with ad- 
ministering the affairs of this world."' 

So it was in every prolonged interval between the later persecutions. As the 
Church grew in numbers and in wealth, formalism and corruption crept within 










mm§ 



' ^1 •'■■ ■■ 1 ir/u Y\ Zs' r 
prostrate;, colossal statute OF PHARAOH. 
Estimated weight 900 tons. The toe measures 3 feet long and the fool 5 feet across. 

the sacred enclosure; faith dwindled to a tradition, and sacraments to mere observ- 
ances, till many of the members, living in ease and security, became such merely 
in name, not in deed and in truth. The ready apostacy of many in Alexandria, 
as related sorrowfully by their bishop, proves that this was so ; nor was their case 
without parallels throughout the empire. Besides these, who were Christians 
only during fair weather, there must have been many sincere but weak believers, 
whose attachment to the faith might fail under fiery trial. Even Origen, "the 
man who had done more than all others to promote the study of the divine oracles, 
the teacher of pagans, the strengthener of Christians, the converter of nations, 
of whom his contemporaries could not speak without love, who was most admired 
by those who were brought nearest the circle of his influence," was thought by 
some to have used an unworthy compliance to save his life. We cannot believe 
that Origen acted against his conscience; his views were more expanded, less 
rigid, than those which largely prevailed in his day ; and it is on record that as 
a confessor he bore the torture. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



141 



Dionysius tells a curious story of one of the lapsed, Serapion, an old man of 
blameless life, but who had given way under fear of the heathen punishments. 
Repenting, he begged again and again to be restored to communion, but was 
refused. At length disease attacked him, and he lay as dead for three days. 
Recovering consciousness and the power of speech, he said to his grandson, 
" How long do you keep me here ? Be quick ; bring one of the presbyters." 
The minister was ill, but gave 
the boy a piece of the con- 
secrated bread, which was then 
reserved for the use of the 
sick, telling him to dip it in 
water and put it in his grand- 
father's mouth. On his return 
Serapion said, "You are come 
at last. Give it to me, and let 
me go." As if he had been 
kept alive only to wait for this 
absolution, he breathed his 
last as soon as he had received 
the morsel. 

The Church had much 
trouble, as we shall see, over 
the cases of three lapsed per- 
sons, and of others called libel- 
latici, who had signed a paper 
signifying that they had sacri- 
ficed, though they had not done 
so. Some held that they might 
never be restored to fellowship, 
and this cruel rigor was the 
cause of an important schism. 
But the more mature and 
more enthusiastic believers 
were in no clanger of falling 
away. Certain confessors, im- 
prisoned a whole year in Rome, 
wrote thus to Cyprian : " What 
can be more glorious and blessed, than under tortures and in sight of death to 
acknowledge God the Lord, and with lacerated body, with free though departing 
spirit, in Christ's name to become fellow-sufferers with Him? We have not yet . 
shed our blood, but we are ready to shed it. Pray for us, dearest Cyprian, that the 




OUTER MUMMY CASE OF QUEEN NEFERT-ART, 
Discovered in 1881, at Dur-el-Bahali. 



142 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Ivord may daily more richly comfort and strengthen us, and at length lead to the 
battlefield that is before us His warriors, whom He hath practiced and proved in 
the camp of a prison. May He bestow upon us those divine arms which never 
can be conquered." 

Decius soon perished in a battle with the Goths, and was succeeded by 
Gallus. For a year the Church had rest; then the spread of pestilence, with 
other public calamities, roused the fury of the superstitious people against the 
Christians. A new edict appeared, requiring all subjects of the empire to 
sacrifice to the gods. Again the services were suppressed, and the faithful 
liad to hide themselves; for it was now understood that prudence was a part 
of duty. Cyprian, in a letter to an African church, is explicit on this point: 

" Let none of you, my brethren, when he sees how our people are driven 
away and scattered from fear of the persecution, be disturbed in mind because 
he no longer sees the brethren together, nor hears the bishops preach. We, 
who dare not shed blood, but are ready to let our blood be shed, cannot 
meet at such a time. Wherever, through the exigencies of these days of trouble t 
any of you may be separated for awhile from the rest, he is absent in body, 
not in spirit. Let him not be disquieted by the pains or perils of the journey; 
and if he be obliged to seek concealment, let not the solitude of a desert frighten 
him. He who keeps God's temple within him is not alone. And if, in the wil- 
derness or in the mountains, a robber or a wild beast should attack the fugitive, or 
liunger, thirst, or cold destroy him; or if, when he crosses the sea, a storm should 
sink his vessel; yet Christ, in every place, beholds His warrior fighting." 

The bishops were still the especial objects of attack, and in particular those of 
Rome. Fabian had fallen in the last reign; his successor, Cornelius, was now 
banished from the Capital, and then condemned to death. To accept that high 
office at this time was to expose oneself to almost certain punishment; and a third, 
Lucius, soon shared the same fate. But the persecution does not seem to have 
been general. Gallus was kept busy by enemies far more dangerous than the 
Christians; and he and his son Volusian, after two years of troubled power, fol- 
lowed Decius to their account. 




CHAPTER IX. 



VALERIAN. 




HE Christians now enjoyed an interval of re- 
pose, for the new empe or favored them at first. 
Valerian, who reigned from 254 to 260, was of high 
reputation as a soldier and a man. But when he had 
been three years on the throne, his mind was poisoned 
by one Macrianus, who is said to have initiated him into 
the mysteries of magic, and he began what is called the 
Eighth Persecution. 

Of this Cyprian was the most illustrious victim. 
He was summoned before Paternus, the proconsul of 
Carthage, who told him, civilly enough, that a rescript 
had arrived from Rome, requiring all to observe the 
Roman ceremonies; he therefore asked Cyprian his in- 
tentions. The bishop answered: " I am a Christian : I know no God but one, 
who created heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them. Him we serve ; 
to Him we pray day and night, for ourselves, for all men, and for the emperor's 
prosperity." u Do you persist in this?" Said Cyprian, "A good resolution, 
which comes from the knowledge of God, can never change." "Then it is the 
will of the princes that you be banished." " He is no exile who has God 
in his heart, for the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." Paternus 
added, "These letters relate to the clergy as well as the bishops. Before 
you go, tell me who are your presbyters." Cyprian very properly replied, 
"Your laws forbid the laying of information, and it is not for me to accuse 
any." The proconsul said : "I will begin to search the city to-day." " Neither 
our views nor your directions," said the bishop, " encourage men to give them- 
selves up ; but if you look for them, you will find them." " The Christians are 
to hold no more assemblies under penalty of death." " Do what you are ordered," 
said Cyprian, and went to his exile at Curubis, a town about fifty miles north, near 
the Mediterranean. 

It appears from this, that cruelties were not at first intended, at least against 
persons of repute and station. But before long the mines in that region were 
filled with Christians, whose sufferings the bishop took pains to relieve, using for 
that purpose the funds at his command, and whose condition he thus describes in 
one of his numerous letters : 

(143) 



i44 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

'Though in the mines are no beds to rest on, the faithful there have rest 




AN EGYPTIAN WOMAN. 

Christ. The limbs, weary with labor, lie on the cold ground, but it is no pain to 
be there with Christ. The feet have been fettered with bands and chains, but he 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 145 

is happily bound of men whom the Lord doth loose. Though the outward man 







AN ALEXANDRIAN DONKEY BOY. 



be covered with filth, yet the inward man is the more purified. There is but 
little bread ; but man lives not by bread alone, but by the word of God. There 



146 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

is but little clothing to keep out the cold ; but be that has put on Christ has 
garments and ornaments enough. Even the loss of the means of grace, my 
dearest brethren, can do your faith no injury. You celebrate the most glorious 
communion, you bring to God the most costly offering, even yourselves." 

To the ministers who were undergoing this punishment he wrote : ' ' Most 
of the faithful have followed your example, confessing with you, and with you 
being crowned ; they love you so that the prison and the mines could not 
separate them from you ; even girls and boys are among you. What triumph, 
to walk through the mines with imprisoned body but free spirit, to know that 
Christ delights in the patience of His servants, who tread in His footsteps and 
walk in His ways to heaven !" 

The separation of the bishops from their flocks failed to accomplish its 
purpose. Wherever they went, they kept up their activity, gathering congre- 
gations, and even founding new societies in remote places where the gospel 
had not taken root before. Thus Dionysius of Alexandria, having been 
banished to a wild region Avest of Egypt, could report : "At first we were 
abused and stoned, but afterwards not a few of the heathen left their idols and 
turned to God. There we first planted the seed of the word ; and as if God 
had brought us thither onty for that end, He led us away again as soon as 
the work was done." 

MARTYRDOM OF CYPRIAN. 

Seeing that milder measures were not successful, Valerian in the year 258 
put forth this edict : " Bishops, priests, and deacons shall at once be beheaded. 
Senators and knights shall lose their dignities and possessions, and, if they 
still continue Christians, shall die by the sword. Women of rank shall be 
banished, and their property confiscated. Servants of the court shall be branded 
and sent in chains to labor on the public works." 

This decree caused the death of many, among them Cyprian. He had been 
released from banishment, but now went into hiding for a time. Learning that 
he was to be taken to another city, Utica, and feeling that, as he wrote in his 
last epistle, "it becomes the bishop to confess the Lord in that place where he is 
set over the Church," when the governor returned to-Carthage, he followed, and 
was presently arrested. Vast crowds, both of Christians and pagans, came to 
witness the trial, for his fame had spread far and wide. He was heated, and a 
soldier offered him fresh clothing ; but he said : "Shall I seek a remedy for ills 
which may last no longer than to-day ?" 

The proconsul entered, and this dialogue ensued: "Are you Thascius 
Cyprian?" "I am." "Are you he whom the Christians call their bishop?" 
"I am." " Our princes have ordered you to worship the gods." "That I will 
not do." '' You would do better to consult your safety, and not despise the 
gods." "My safety and my strength is Christ the Lord, whom I desire to serve 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



J 47 



forever." The governor 
said, "I am sorry for 
your case, and would 
like to take counsel on 
it." But Cyprian an- 
swered, "I have no wish 
that things should be 
otherwise with me than 
that I may adore my 
God, and hasten to Him 
with all the ardor of my 
soul; "and he quoted Ro- 
mans viii., 1 8. There- 
upon the proconsul, 
Iris patience exhausted, 
pronounced sentence : 
"You have lived long 
in sacrilege. You have 
formed a society of im- 
pious conspirators. You 
nave shown yourself an 
enemy to our gods and 
our religion, and have 
not listened to the just 
counsels of our princes. 
You have been a father 
and a ringleader of the 
godless sect. Therefore 
you shall be an example 
to the rest, that by your 
death they may learn 
their duty. Let Thas- 
•cius Cyprian, who re- 
fuses to sacrifice to the 
gods, die by the sword." 
"God be praised," said 
the martyr. 

As they led him 
away, many followed, 
crying," Let us die with 
our holy bishop !" The 




A STREET VIEW IN CAIRO. 



148 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



officers conducted him into a plain girt around with trees ; on these many- 
climbed, for the better view. He took off his outer garments, directed nioney 
to be given to the executioner, knelt down, and bound a cloth over his eyes. 
A presbyter and a deacon tied his hands ; some of the people brought napkins 

and handker- 
■ 

HI 



chiefs to receive 
his blood. The 
sword descended, 
aud the head was. 
severed. 

This trial 
and its result, 
offer a marked 
contrast to some 
in preceding, 
persecutions — 
especially to the 
horrid scenes at. 
Lyons, eighty 
years before. 
The decency and. 
regularity of the 
proceedings, the 
I respect shown to- 
the accused, the 
absence of tor- 
ture, the procon- 
sul's reluctance 
togotoextremes, 
and his anxiety 
to explain and 
justify the sent- 
ence he was 
obliged to pro- 
nounce, all indi- 
cate an increased 
seriousness in 




£^^SSSfe^ ~^fl%iiii 



TOMBS UF CAMPAGNA. 



the official mind as it encountered, and tried to suppress, the unauthorized re 
ligion. The careless frivolity, the contemptuous indifference of former judges, 
have disappeared. The Church could no longer be despised, for it had grown 
immensely, and some of its ministers and members were persons of mark and 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 149 

influence. The government, perceiving these facts, seemed in part to realize the 
magnitude of the problem it had taken in hand. Valerian and the better sort 
of his officers evidently wished to avoid needless cruelty, and to shed as little 
blood as might be. 

ST. LAWRENCE. 

But it was too much to expect that all magistrates throughout the empire 
should share these views, or confine themselves to the letter and spirit of their 
instructions. The famous story of St. Lawrence, deacon at Rome, illustrates 
as forcibly as any the barbarity of ancient manners, and the abuse of office 
which could still go unrebuked, even at the capital. As Sextus, the fourth 
Roman bishop to be slain within a few years, was led to execution, Lawrence, in 
tears, asked, "My father, are you going without your son?" Sextus answered, 
" You shall follow me in three days." The prefect of Rome, who had heard a 
tale of the great riches of the Church there, sent for Lawrence, and ordered him 
to deliver them up. He asked for time to get them into order, and three days 
were granted. These expired, the deacon brought forward a number of poor 
persons and offered them as the Church's treasures, with certain widows and 
virgins as her jewels. The prefect, in a rage, exclaimed, "Do you mock me? 
I know you pride yourselves on despising death, so it shall not be swift or easy 
for you." The legend goes on to say that, after enduring various torments, the 
bold deacon was fastened to a huge gridiron and broiled over a slow fire ; and 
that having borne this for some time, he invited the executioners to turn him 
•over. This expression of his amazing fortitude has been thus versified by some 
grim jester of later days : 

' ' This side enough is toasted ; 

Then turn me, tryant, and eat ; 
And see whether raw or roasted 

I am the better meat." 

DIONYSIUS. 

Dionysius of Alexandria, who had escaped in the persecution of Decius, 
was now brought, with some of his clergy, before the prefect yEmilian, and 
required to recant, and set an example to others. He answered, " We ought to 
obey God rather than man. I worship Him, the only true object of worship." 
The magistrate said: "Hear the clemency of the emperor. You are all par- 
doned if you return to your duty as good citizens. Adore the gods who guard 
the empire, and give up these notions of yours, which are against nature." 
The bishop, to gratify this humane governor, descended to argument. "All 
men do not worship the same gods ; their ideas and their observances vary. 
We adore the One God, the Maker of all things, who gave the empire to our 
lords Valerian and Gallienus ; to Him we pray constantly for their welfare." 
"What do you mean?" ^Eniilian asked. "Can you not worship that God of 



i5o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



yours — supposing He is a God — along with our gods ?" This was the position 
of the pagans ; they could never understand the separateness, the exclusive- 
ness of the Christian belief. The bishop saw that discussion was useless, and 
answered simply, " We worship no other God." 

He got off with banishment ; but 
he bears this testimony to the fate of 
, others in Egypt: "There were men 
f and women, young and old, soldiers and 
";': peasants, of all sorts and ages. Some, 
\ after stripes and fire, were crowned victors. 
Some at once by the sword, and others 
i, after short but severe torture, became 
, acceptable sacrifices to the Lord." He 
mentions several who ministered to the 
confessors in prison ; most of these died 
of diseases contracted in their work of 
mercy. Eusebius, afterwards a bishop in 
Syria, was especially diligent in these 
latticed window in atexandria. tasks, and in burying the bodies of mar- 

tyrs, a labor of much difficulty and danger. "The governor to this day ceases 
not to behead some, and to tear others in pieces by torments, or consume them 
more slowly by fetters and imprisonment. He forbids any to come near them,, 
and inquires daily whether his orders are obeyed. Yet God still refreshes the 
afflicted with His comforts and with the attendance of the brethren." 




SAPRICIUS AND NICEPHORUS. 



A curious story came from Antioch in those days. Sapricius, a presbyter,, 
and Nicephorus, a layman, having long been intimate friends, quarreled. After a 
time the latter softened and begged forgiveness, which Sapricius would not 
grant. The persecution came on ; the presbyter was arrested, answered bravely 
before the judge, bore torments with patience, and was led out to be beheaded. 
Nicephorus, hearing of this, ran to the scene, and renewed his entreaties, at 
last quoting the text, "Ask, and it shall be given you ;" but the other was still 
obdurate. Here was a strange spectacle ; a minister of the word, nearing his 
earthly end, unmindful of one of his Master's plainest precepts ; a confessor,, 
on the very verge of martyrdom, cherishing revenge and hatred in his heart, 
refusing to be reconciled to his former friend. But the single sin, thus 
cherished, sapped the tower of his virtue ; at the last moment his strength gave 
way, and he cried, "Strike me not ; I am ready to sacrifice." Horrified at this, 
Nicephorus begged him not to lose what he had so nearly gained ; but his ear 
was still closed to the voice of faithful and long-suffering affection. Then the 




THE COLLOSSI OF THEBES. 
[Said to be] GO feet high. 

151 



152 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



other, as if feeling that amends must be made for this defection, cried out, " I 
am a Christian ; I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has renounced." 
They sent word to the governor, and by his direction Nicephorus was executed 
in place of the apostate. 

Surprising constancy was shown by a boy named Cyril, at Caesarea of 
Cappadocia, in the eastern part of Asia Minor. His pagan father had driven 
him from the house ; the judge told him he should be taken back if he would 




GREAT HA.LI/ IN THE TEMPLE OF ABYDOS. 

be wise and look after his own interests. " God will receive me," said the child. 
" I shall have a better home. I fear not death, for it will lead me to life eternal." 
He was led out as to execution, then brought back, and again tempted with 
threats and flatteries, but to no purpose. Despising the sword and fire, he told 
the sympathizing beholders that they should rather rejoice than lament at his 
fate, for he was going to a heavenly city. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



*53 



To another Caesarea, that in Palestine, came three countrymen to be devoured 
"by wild beasts, blaming themselves because the persecution had not sought them 
out at home. Their case, like the last two cited, may show an excess of zeal, 
such as was not generally encouraged or approved. In times of severe affliction 
fanaticism springs up in the noblest hearts ; and the martyr's crown was sup- 
posed to secure immediate admittance to the highest seats in heaven. 

Valerian, though far from the worst, was the most luckless of Roman princes. 
While at war with Persia, he was taken prisoner, and Sapor, the King of that 
distant country, exposed him to the derision of the crowd and used him for 
a horseblock, placing his foot upon an emperor's neck whenever he went out to 
ride. When Valerian died, after three years of this wretched captivity, his skin 
was stuffed and hung up in a temple. This tale, at least, was believed by 
the Christians, who saw the vengeance of heaven in the fate of their persecutor. 

GALLIENUS. 

His son Gallienus, who had shared the throne, now reigned by himself, and 
proceeded to reverse his father's active policy. He was a man of easy temper, 
cultivated mind, and light character ; according 
to Gibbon, "master of several curious but use- 
less sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a 
skilful gardener, an excellent cook, and a most 
contemptible prince." To his proper business of 
ruling he paid no attention, and under his lax 
hand the empire, long threatened by foreign 
foes and internal dissensions, nearly 
went to pieces. This was the period of 
the so-called "Thirty Tyrants," of whom 
only nineteen are known. Nearly every 
Roman general of importance in the 
various provinces proclaimed himself 
emperor, or was proclaimed, sometimes 
against his will, by his legions ; and 
some of these beneficent usurpers, es- 
pecially in Gaul and Germany, preserved 
civilization, which but for them would 
have been overrun by the barbarians. 

The Church, however, profited by 
the carelessness, the incompetence, and 
the vices of Gallienus. Caring nothing 
for the state religion, and perhaps re- 
garding the Christians as one of many philosophic sects, he granted them the 
free exercise of their religion, and ordered that their buildings, cemeteries, and 




GALLIENUS. 



154 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

other property, which his father had confiscated, be restored to them. Their 
faith Avas thus at one stroke placed in the class of tolerated or allowed religions. 

It must have been before this edict reached the western borders of the 
empire, that Fructuosus, bishop of Tarragona, in Spain, suffered with two of 
his deacons. After six days' imprisonment, the governor required them to 
"worship the gods whom the emperor Gallienus worships." The bishop 
answered, "Nay, I worship no dumb gods of wood and stone, but the Lord 
and Master of Gallienus, the Father and Creator of all things, and his only 
Son sent down to us ; of whose flock here I am the Shepherd." The magis- 
trate sneered: "Say not you are, but that you were.' 1 '' He then committed 
them to the flames, "where, their bonds being loosed by the fire, they lifted 
up their hands, praising the living God, to the wonder of those who stood by." 

The martyrdom of Marinus, at Csesarea in Samaria, about 261, is accounted 
for by the fact that that region was then in the power of Macrianus, one of 
the first generals to rise in rebellion. Marinus was a soldier, and was about 
to be promoted to the post of a centurion or captain of a company, when 
another who stood next in rank, coveting the place, accused him as a Christian, 
who could not legally hold military office. This was scarcely so, for many 
Christians were in the army through these three centuries, and some rose to 
the highest dignities ; but in a time of persecution the laws, which before were 
relaxed, might be rigidly applied. Achaius, the judge, after inquiring into 
the matter, gave Marinus three hours to reflect and determine on his course. 
The bishop, Theotecnus, found him, led him into the church, and, pointing 
with one hand to the sword which the soldier wore, and with the other to the 
book of the gospels, told him he must make his choice. On this Marinus 
raised his right hand and laid it on the sacred book. " Now," said the bishop, 
"hold fast to God, and may you obtain what you have chosen." He made a 
good confession, and was put to death by the sword he had renounced for 
his Master. 

AURELIAN. 

Claudius, who reigned from 268 to 270, was an able and virtuous monarch. 
He won his glorious surname .of Gothicus by defeating the Goths, the most 
dangerous enemies of Rome ; and he did not trouble the Christians. Aurelian 
(270-275), another great soldier and conqueror, put down foreign and domestic 
foes alike, and restored order and unity throughout the empire. A serious 
heathen and zealous for the laws, he no doubt meditated proceedings against 
the Christians ; but the so-called Ninth Persecution, which is ascribed to him> % 
was rather intended than carried out. 

During a war in the north, the Senate had neglected or declined to con- 
sult the ancient oracles, placing more confidence in the emperor and his army 
than in any help their deities might give. When Aurelian heard of this, he 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



1 5S 



was displeased, and wrote them, "I wonder that you should have hesitated 
so long to open the sibylline books, as if you had been consulting in a 
Christian church, and not in the temple of all the gods." He urged them 
to support his military operations in the field by abundant pagan rites at 
home, and 
offered to bear 
all the costs 
of victims for 
the sacrifices, 
and to send on 
prisoners of 
war, appar- 
ently to be 
slaughtered in 
these ceremo- 
nies — a prac- 
tice never 
much in vogue 
at Rome. 

So much 
for his senti- 
ments ; but it 
was not easy 
to proceed 
against a re- 
ligion which 
had been for- 
mally placed 
among those 
tolerated by 
the state. In. 
one celebrated 
case, indeed, 
he was obliged 
to give it his 
personal sanc- 
tion, by decid- 
ing a dispute scene near st. Sebastian's gate. 
among the Christians. They of Antioch appealed to him to remove Paul of 
Samosata, who claimed the bishopric, though under a stigma of false and 
heretical opinions. Aurelian. not caring to go into such a matter, referred it to> 




156 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



the bishop of Rome, with authority to settle the question. This, which occurred 
about 273, was afterwards used to support the claims of Rome to primacy over the 
universal Church. 

The alleged martyrs of this reign were so few, and the accounts of them 
so doubtful, as scarcely to be worth mentioning. Privatus, a French bishop, is 
said to have been killed by German invaders, and Mormas, a shepherd of Asia 
Minor, to have been accused of sorcery before the proconsul of Cappadocia, and 
after cruel torments thrust through with a spear. No more reliable, probably, 
are the legends which tell how Aurelian was prevented, by lightning or by a 
suddenly paralyzed hand, from signing a decree against the Christians. Eusebius 
says he was about to publish such an edict; others claim that he had already 
done so. At any rate, his plans were frustrated by his death, which came in 
the usual way, at the hands of conspirators. Few of the emperors, especially 
-at this period, died in their beds ; most of them, good or bad, were murdered 
by their own men. 

Disregarding the merely nominal persecution of Aurelian, the Church had 
almost uninterrupted rest for forty years, from the death of Valerian to the 
end of the century. The excellent Probus, the warlike Carus, and the feeble 
or short-lived rulers who preceded or followed them, did not trouble her. Her 
position, as recognized by the state, was very different from what it had ben 
in days of outlawry. By consequence, her numbers increased enormously, and 
the character of her membership, and of her ministry too, declined. She was 
no longer separated from the world, hated, oppressed, and helpless. Corruption 
-came in apace ; there was need of a new trial of faith, a last purging as by fire. 




the; nile. 



CHAPTER X. 

DIOCLETIAN. 



HE great monarch under whom the 
terrible Tenth Persecution began 
was not, as some have' supposed, 
a mere bloodthirsty tj^rant, but 
a statesman and a soldier, with 
brains to plan and force to carry 
out the reconstruction of the em- 
pire after a new pattern. Born 
in the lowest station, he rose by 
sheer native merit, and at last 
took to himself a title {dominies 
or lord) which offended the stricter 
pagans of the old school, for they thought 
it more than man might claim. Living 
more and more in the East, he prepared 
the way for the transfer of the capital from 
Italy to the shores of Asia. He intro- 
duced a pomp of oriental despotism, before 
which the last remnants of republican simplic- 
ity gave way. He saw that the times had 
changed, and strove to fit his court and man- 
ners to the change. Whatever he did, he did 
advisedly ; but the structure he built up was not long to endure. History now 
becomes cumbrous and complicated ; there are two Augusti or emperors, with twa 
Caesars or sub-emperors, who divide the earth between them ; and these will 
presently be marrying each other's daughters, quarreling among themselves, 
putting each other down, taking one another's places. These fashions are far 
from our sympathy, and almost as far from our understanding. Monarchy 
seems overgrown, the earth is weary ; the day of a great change is at hand. 

For nearly twenty years, or almost to the end of his reign (284-305), 
Diocletian favored the Christians, or at least did nothing against them. Many 
of them were about his court and in the army, holding positions from the 
lowest to almost the highest. That he held the old political theory appears 

('57) 




*5» 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



from an edict published in 296 against the Manichees, a half Christian, half 
pagan sect which arose in Persia: "The immortal gods have in their providence 
ordained and established what is true and good. Many wise and good men 
agree in the opinion that this must be maintained without change. These we 
dare not oppose, and no new religion should venture to blame the old; for it 
is a great crime to pull down that which our forefathers built up, and which 
has dominion in the state." Christianity certainty meant to pull down the 

old religion, but that fact might not be always 







perceived by the government, and the Church 



J 



was for the time permitted and recognized. 

The boldness, if not sometimes the rashness, 
of true believers was liable to open the eyes of 
the authorities. The army was of first import- 
ance, and nothing that interfered with it could be 
allowed. Yet some had always held 
— probably in this age a small minority 
— that military service was inconsistent 
with a profession of Christ. In 295, 
at Sevesta in Numidia, a youth called 
Maximilian was conscripted. His name 
was taken down, and the formalities of 
his enrolment had begun, when he cried 
out, " I cannot be a soldier; I can do 
nothing wicked; I am a Christian." 
The proconsul, taking no notice of 
what he probably regarded as a mere 
petulant outburst, directed him to be 
measured, and then said, "Let them 
put the badge about your neck." He 
replied, "I will not wear it; I bear 
already the badge of Christ, my God." The governor thought it now time to 
try a threat; "I will send j^ou to your Christ at once." The undaunted youth 
answered, " I hope you may: it would be a glory to me." They tried to put the 
soldier's leaden badge upon him, but he struggled, and threatened to break it. 
The humane officer tried to persuade him, telling him that there were Christians 
in the body-guard of all the four emperors ; but he would not listen. At last 
he was sentenced to death, not at all for his religion, but simply for refusing to 
render military service. 

MARCELLUS THE CENTURIAN. 

Occurrences like this (and they may have been numerous) would easily 
give a handle to charges that the followers of Jesus were seditious, and their 



DIOCLETIAN. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY, 



J 59 



religion injurious to the state. Galerius, Diocletian's son-in-law and one of the 
Caesars, often used the sacrifices and auspices in his camp : on such occasions 
the Christians about him, regarding the heathen deities as devils, used to make 
the sign of the cross, to ward off their evil influence. This practice was noticed, 
and the pagan priests claimed that "the gcds were no longer present at the 
sacrifices, not because they feared 
the cross, but because the hostile 
and profane sign was hateful to 
them." In this way they roused 
the wrath of Galerius, who in turn 
worked upon Diocletian, and pro- 
cured, about 298, an order that 
every soldier should offer sacrifice. 
On this, as Eusebius says, many 
of all ranks left the army, and a 
few were put to death. The vic- 
tims were probably those who had 
made themselves conspicuous, as 
in the notable case of Marcellus. 
He was a centurion serving: 

o 

at what is now Tangier, opposite 
Gibraltar, on the extreme western 
border of the empire. In the midst 
of a festival, before all his com- 
rades, he suddenry rose, threw 
down his arms and sign of office, 
and said, "I will fight no longer 
for your Csesars, nor pray to your 
gods of wood and stone. If the 
condition of a soldier requires him 
to sacrifice to gods and emperors, 
I abandon the vine-branch and the belt, and serve no more." He was sentenced 
to be beheaded, probably for insubordination or mutiny, and met his fate as 
boldly as he had provoked it. We are told that Cassian the register, whose 
duty it was to record the sentence, objected to it as unjust, and followed his 
friend a month later. 

It may have been partly the motive of this edict — if the persecutors were 
wily enough to lay their plans so carefully — to provoke resistance like that of 
Marcellus, and thus to bring the Christians into such discredit as might make 
further steps against them easier. Men who had served long and faithfully in 
the army, without being required to do anything contrary to their belief, would 




A COBBLER INSTALLED IN A RUINED PALACE. 




BATHS OF CARACALtA. 

160 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



161 



naturally be indignant at this new and sudden requirement, and at the suspicion 
which it implied. If they spoke or acted rashly, how easy to say, " You see, 
these Christians are all disloyal ; not one of them can be trusted. They are a 
standing men- 
ace to govern- 
ment: it is 
time to put 
them down." 

AT NICOMEDIA. 

So the 
fierce Galerius 
thought, and 
so he acted. 
But it was 
years before 
he could bring 
Diocletian 
over to his 
views. The 
emperor was 
old, sick, and 
tired of the 
cares of state; 
his wife and 
daughter were 
said to be se- 
cretly Chris- 
tians. All 
winter the two 
rulers were 
together at 
Nicomedia, in 
Asia, not far 
from the coast 
of Thrace. 
The younger 
man urged; 

the elder ob- chorch of sr. ikophimus, a companion of st. paul. 

jected, doubted, feared to act. The emperor wished to restrict the persecution to 
the court and army; the younger insisted that it should be general, the object 




l62 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



being to stamp out Christianity. At length Diocletian, overborne,gave way : the 
horrors that ensued may be credited rather to his weakness than to his will. 

Maternal influences spurred the fury of Galerius, who seems to have cared 

nothing for the 
feelings and opin- 
ions of his wife. 
His mother, a fa- 
natical worshipper 
of Cybele or other 
deities, "was seized 
with a spirit of 
proselytism, and 
celebrated almost 
every day a splen- 
did sacrifice, fol- 
lowed by a ban- 
quet, at which she 
required the pres- 
ence of the whole 
courf." The re- 
fusal of the Chris- 
tians to attend 
made her very 
angry, and her 
offended aud re- 
vengeful pride was 
the immediate 
cause of what fol- 
lowed. Her son, 
having secured an 
oracle to suit his 
end, wished to burn 
all who refused to 
the; martyr's faith. sacrifice ; but Dio- 

cletian said there must be no loss of life. So the attack commenced in a new 
way, ou the festival of the Terminalia, February 23d, 303. 

Gibbon tells the story thus: "At the earliest dawn of t day, the pretorian 
prefect, accompanied by several generals, tribunes, and officers of the revenue, 
Irepaired to the principal church in Nicomedia, which was situated on an eminence 
in the most populous and beautiful part of the city. The doors were instantly 
broken open ; they rushed into the sanctuary ; and as they searched in vain for 





THE PREFECT WITH HIS FOLLOWERS DESTROYING THE PRINCIPAL CHURCH OF NICOMEDIA. 



163 



164 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

some visible object of worship, they were obliged to content themselves with 
committing to the flames the volumes of Holy Scripture. The ministers of 
Diocletian were followed by a numerous body of guards and pioneers, who> 
marched in order of battle, and were provided with all the instruments used in 
the destruction of fortified cities. 

"By their incessant labor a sacred edifice which towered above the imperial 
palace, and had long excited the indignant and envy of the gentiles, was in a. 
few hours leveled with the ground." Galerius, reckless of the danger of the 
flames spreading, had wished to burn the church, but was overruled. 

The Christians made no resistance ; it was contrary to their Master's com- 
mand, and it would have availed them nothing. Anxiously they awaited what 
should come next. It might be more regular, as it certainly was usual, to> 
begin with a proclamation ; but the action of the government spoke more 
loudly than words. Next morning this edict was posted in the market-place : 
"The assemblies of the Christians are forbidden. Their churches shall be- 
pulled down, and all copies of their sacred books burned. Those who have 
offices of honor and dignity shall lose them, unless they abjure. In the judi- 
cial investigations, the torture may be applied against all Christians of any rank 
whatever. Those of lower condition shall lose their freedom. Slaves, while 
they remain Christians, may not be set free." This sentence, terrible enough 
in its wording, was more terrible in what it implied. Believers were subjected. 
to any kind of loss and punishment, short of death. We know that, as a direct 
result, many were made slaves, and condemned to the hardest and most revolt- 
ing kinds of labor. 

SACRED BOOKS DESTROYED. 

Let us turn aside a moment from the direct course of our narrative, to 
consider this new crusade against the sacred writings — chiefly, of course, the 
four gospels and other books of the New Testament. It was a cunning 
thought, which would not have occurred to the pagans of a century earlier. 
If the idea could have been carried out — if all the books could have been de- 
stroyed — the Christians would have lost, not indeed the Foundation of their 
faith, for that went deeper than any array of words, but the documents that were 
essential to the preservation of that faith in its purity. 

The emperors fancied that the measure would be effectual. In Spain, two 
pillars were erected in their honor, one " for having extinguished the name of 
the Christians, who brought the state to ruin ;" the other " for having every- 
where abolished the superstition of Christ, and extended the worship of the 
gods," And a coin or medal is said to exist with this inscription, " The name 
Christian being extinguished." But they were mistaken ; it was not within the. 
power of Diocletian and Galerius to abolish Christianity. 




165 



1 66 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Doubtless many copies of parts of the Bible were destroyed, being taken by 
violence or through the fears of those who had the keeping of them. Those who 
gave them up were regarded with scarcely less horror than those who sacrificed 
to idols. They were called traditores, whence comes our word traitor ; he who 
handed over the Scriptures to be burnt was a traitor to the faith. But many 
guarded this trust as more precious than life. A reader (one of the inferior 
ministers then already recognized in the Church) replied to the proconsul's 
question, " Yes, I have them, but it is in my heart." Another African, Felix 
of Tibinra, said, " I have them, but I will not part with them ;" and being 
ordered to execution, thanked God that he had " lived fifty-six years, kept his 
purity, preached faith and truth, and preserved the gospel." . 

Nor was the search always conducted with the careful zeal which the 
emperors expected ; their object was sometimes defeated by the pious artifices of 
the clergy, or the easy compliance of the officers. Mensurius, bishop of Carth- 
age, concealed all the copies of the Scriptures, and left in the churches only 
the writings of heretics ; these were taken by the searchers, to whom one book 
was as good as another. Some of the leading pagans learned the facts, and 
reported them to Annulinus the proconsul, asking him to look in the bishop's 
house ; but he refused to take further steps in the matter. So Secundus and 
Felix, two other bishops, refusing to betray their trust, were asked, for form's 
sake, to " give up something, anything, no matter what ; any writings of little 
value, which they did not care for." In one case the prefect suggested the 
answer he was quite willing to receive, " Perhaps you have none ?" and was 
amazed that a Christian conscience would not purchase safety by a lie. 

To return to Nicomedia, where the immediate results of the decree were far 
more tragical. The edict was at once torn down by a Christian of the upper 
classes, with the sarcastic remark, " New victories against the Goths and 
Samaritans '!" He was promptly arrested, and " burned, or rather roasted, by a 
slow fire ; and his executioners, zealous to avenge the personal affront which 
had been offered to the emperors, exhausted every refinement of cruelty with- 
out being able to subdue his patience, or to alter the steady and insulting 
smile which in his dying agonies he still preserved." We who are bred to 
free speech may admire the spirit, but not the prudence, of one who could thus 
provoke despotic power. Tyrants are not forgiving, and the only effect of his 
rashness was to bring fresh calamities upon his friends. 

Within fifteen days the palace was twice in flames. Galerius left it and 
the city in haste, pretending that his life was not safe there. The guilt of 
these attempts (if they were not accidents) was, of course, laid upon the Chris- 
tians, and by them upon Galerius. If the second fire was a device of his, as 
seems probable enough, the plot was entirely successful. The mind of Dio- 
cletian was now inflamed with rage and fear, and he was ready for any measures 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



167 



against those whom he had been brought to look on as his most disloyal 
subjects and most dangerous foes. The Caesar had accomplished his deadly 
purpose ; the emperor was as ferocious against the faith as he. 



CRUELTIES 
IN THE PALACE. 

His first victims 
were his own domestic 
servants, suspected as 
the authors of the al- 
leged attempts upon 
his life, and known to 
be guilty of professing 
Christ. His own wife 
and daughter were com- 
pelled to sacrifice, and 
those who would not do 
so were tormented in 
his presence. The 
powerful eunuchs, 
Dorotheus, Gorgonius, 
and Andreas, were 
strangled, after a variety 
of sufferings. Peter, 
one of the household 
officers, was scourged 
till his bones were laid 
bare ; vinegar and salt 
were rubbed into his 
wounds; and at last, 
refusing to renounce 
his religion, he perished 
in a slow fire. In those 
inhuman days, an 
angry tyrant easily be- 
came a fiend. 

The city was next 
attended to. Anthi- 
mus, the bishop, was 
beheaded. Many shared 
his fate ; many were 




168 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

burned ; many were tied, with stones about their necks, rowed out to the middle 
of the lake, and drowned. 

From Nicomedia the persecution spread in every direction. The other rulers 
were required to do their share. The rude Maximian Hercules, whom Diocletian 
had made his colleague, willingly did his part in and about Italy. Constantius 
Chlorus, the second Caesar and father of Constantine the Great, was of different 
metal ; he had charge of the western provinces. A humane man and a friend to 
the Christians, he was not ready for a civil war, and so was forced to make a 
show of obeying his orders. He pulled down certain churches, but took no life : 
in France, where he chiefly lived, not a drop of blood was shed. 

THE TENTH PERSECUTION BECOMES GENERAL. 

The general effects of the first edict are thus described by Gibbon, who 
always made as little as he could of the persecutions: "The property of the 
Church was at once confiscated, and either sold to the highest bidder, united 
to the imperial domain, bestowed on the cities and corporations, or granted to 
the solicitations of rapacious courtiers. After taking such effectual measures to 
abolish the worship and dissolve the government of the Christians, it was thought 
necessary to subject them to the most intolerable hardships. The whole body of 
them were put out of the protection of the law. The judges were authorized to 
hear and to determine every action brought against a Christian. But the Christians 
were not permitted to complain of any injury which they had suffered ; and thus 
these unfortunate sectaries were exposed to the severity, while they were excluded 
from the benefits, of public justice. This new species of martyrdom, so painful 
and lingering, so obscure and ignominious, was perhaps the most proper to weary 
the constancy of the faithful." 

But this was not all ; it was only the beginning. It was easy to find excuses, 
if excuses were wanted, for further severity against the Christians ; and certain 
disturbances or risings in Syria and Armenia were, as usual, laid to their charge. 
Two incidents, which occurred a little later, show the suspicious temper of the 
government. A youth in Palestine, being asked what was his native land, 
replied, "Jerusalem, where the sun rises, the country of the pious." The sacred 
city of the Jews was now known only as JBlia. Capitolina, and the proconsul had 
probably never heard of either the earthly or the heavenly Jerusalem ; so he 
began to make careful and extensive inquiries, to find some town in the far east 
which the Christians had founded, and from which they meant to upset the 
empire. Procopius, a priest, being required to offer libations to the two Augusti 
and two Caesars, quoted a line of Homer to the effect that it is not well to have 
too many rulers. This gibe also was taken seriously, and supposed to indicate a 
deep and widespread conspiracy. 

The edict of Nicomedia was shortly followed by three more. One directed 
the governors of the various provinces to seize all the clergy and put them in 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



169 



chains : by consequence, " the prisons, destined for the vilest criminals, were soon 
filled with a multitude of bishops, presbyters, deacons, readers, and exorcists." 
The next directed the magistrates to set free such prisoners as recanted, and to 
nse any and 
all measures 
to compel the 
rest to sacri- 
fice. The last, 
.dated 304, ex- 
tended these 
rules to all 
Christians, 
and denounc- 
ed heavy pen- 
alties against 
any who 
should protect 
or help them. 
In spite of 
this cruel law, 
many heath- 
ens in Alex- 
andria and 
elsewhere had 
the generous 
courage to con- 
ceal and feed 
their outlawed 
friends, and to 
run great risks 
in their de- 
fense. The 
very officials 
and execution- 
ers, wearied 

with horrors, interior view of the catacombs. 

sometimes connived at the escape of their victims. " One was dismissed as if 
he had sacrificed, though he was dragged to the altar, and the thing to be offered 
put into his hands by violence. Another went away in silence, some persons, 
with a humane falsehood, testifying that he had complied. One, after he had 
been tortured, was thrown out as dead, though yet alive. Another, protesting 




170 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



against what was exacted of him, was struck on the mouth to compel him to 
silence, and thrust out of the court." But these cases were the exceptions. 

TESTIMONY OF PHILEAS AND EUSEBIUS. 

The cruelties perpetrated were so severe, those against whom they were 
directed so numerous, and the time so near that of the Church's triumph, that 




ANCIENT BURYING PLACE Oh ROME- 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 171 

we have more records of this persecution than of all that had preceded it together.. 
Phileas, an Egyptian bishop and afterwards a martyr, while in prison at Alex- 
andria, wrote this account of what he had seen : 

"Coveting the best gifts, the martyrs, who carried Christ within, underwent 
all sorts of tortures once and again. And while the guards insulted them in 
word and deed, they were preserved serene and unbroken in spirit, because 
perfect love casteth out fear. But what language can do j ustice to their fortitude ? 
Free leave was given to any to injure them ; some beat them with clubs, others 
with rods ; some scourged them with ropes, others with thongs of leather. Some, 
having their hands tied behind them, were hung upon a wooden engine, and all 
their limbs stretched by machines. The torturers rent their whole bodies with 
iron nails, applied not only to the sioles, as with murderers, but also to their 
stomachs, their legs, their cheeks. Others were hung up by one hand, and all 
their joints distended. Others were bound to pillars, face to face, their feet being- 
raised above the ground, that their bonds, being stretched by the weight of their 
bodies, might be drawn the closer ; and this they endured for nearly a whole day- 
The governor ordered them to be dragged on the ground as they were dying. 
He said, ' No care ought to be taken of these Christians : let all treat them as 
unworthy the name of men.' Some, after they had been scourged, lay in the 
stocks, with both feet stretched to the fourth hole, so that they had to lie face 
upward, being unable to stand through the wounds caused by their stripes. 
Some died under their tortures. Others, having been recovered by methods 
taken to heal them, and obliged to choose between sacrifice and death, cheerfully 
preferred to die. For they knew what was written, 'Whoso sacrificeth to other 
gods shall be destroyed,' and 'Thou shalt have no other gods but Me.'" 

Eusebius, the historian of the Church and bishop of Csesarea, says that 
while in Egypt he saw many put to death, both by the sword and by fire, in 
one day ; so that the two executioners were fatigued and their weapons blunted. 
He tell us much of the martyrs of Palestine, Procopius, who so imprudently- 
quoted Homer, being the first of them ; and he speaks of a governor of Bithy- 
nia (the province of which Nicomedia was then the chief city), who was as 
proud "as if he had subdued a nation of barbarians, because one person, after 
two years' resistance, had yielded to the force of torments." He knew others 
who boasted that their administrations were not polluted with blood (that is, life- 
blood), because they aimed to torment without killing. Lactantius, a famous 
scholar of this period, justly denounces these men as the worst sort of perse- 
cutors ; they studied the human frame to see how much it would bear, and 
sought to inflict the greatest amount of suffering, while denying to their victims 
the release of death and the martyr's crown. 

Libanius, a heathen, in his funeral oration on Julian, called the Apostate, 
bears testimony to what the Christians had suffered at this time, by telling what 



TJ2 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



they looked for on Julian's accession to the throne. "They were in great terror, 
and expected that their eyes would be plucked out, their heads cut off, and that 
rivers of their blood would flow from the multitude of slaughters. They feared 

that their new master 



would invent new 
kinds of torments, 
compared with which 
mutilation, the sword, 
the fire, drowning, 
being buried alive, 
would appear but 
slight pains. For the 
preceding emperors 
had employed against 
them all these sorts 
of punishment." 

It is needless to 
give the list of even 
the more noted mar- 
tyrs, or to sicken the 
reader with the varied 
record of cruelty; but 
a few instances of 
fidelity and patience 
may be cited. Ro- 
manus, a deacon of 
Csesarea, chanced to 
enter Antioch when 
many apostates were 
thronging to the 
temples to sacrifice. 
At the sight his spirit 
arose within him, and 
he loudly rebuked 
their weakness and 
desertion. He was 
seized at once, and 
being fastened to the 
stake, asked boldly, "Where is the fire for me?" Galerius, who was present, 
was enraged at this, and ordered his tongue to be cut out ; he offered it without 
a murmur. He was put in prison, kept there long under torments, and at last 




A CATRENE woman. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



*7S 



strangled. A boy of twenty stood unbound, with, bis bands extended in prayer,, 
exposed to bears and leopards, wbicb would not touch him. A bull, urged with 
a hot iron, turned on the tormentors and tossed them. At length the brave youth. 
was dispatched. Adauctus, a man of noble birth and high office, suffered bravely 
in Rome. A Phrygian town, almost entirely Christian, was thought worthy of the 
attention of 
an army. The 
people, refus- 
ing to sacri- 
fice, ran to the 
church; the 
soldiers set it 
on fire, and all 
perished to- 
gether. Three 
ladies of Anti- 
och, otherwise 
defenseless 
against the 
insults of the 
soldiers, 
sprang into 
the sea; two 
others were 
thrown there 
by the perse- 
cutors. 

In Pon- 
tus, on the 
south shore 
of the Euxine 
or Black sea, 
sharp reeds 
were thrust 
under the 
finger-nails of 
som e, and 



melted lead 

poured on the triumphal arch of san gallo. 

backs of others. In Egypt some were tied to crosses witb their heads toward the 

earth, and so left to die. In one day, at one place, a hundred men, women, and 




174 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



•children were put to death by various torments. When the officers grew tired 
of murdering, they took to cutting off a leg or plucking out an eye, and then 
sending the maimed body to the mines. It is to be remembered that any 
of these victims could at any time save what was left of them by submission. 

A few dying speeches or prayers may end this doleful chapter. Victoria, a 
girl of Carthage, was troubled by a brother, who claimed that she was of un- 
sound mind. "Such mind as I have," she said, "has not changed and will 
not change." The proconsul asked, "Will you go with, your brother ?" "No; 
they are my brethren who obey God's commands." One in torture cried: "Help 
me, O Christ ! Have pity on me, that I be not brought to confusion ; O give 
me strength to suffer." Another, in like case, was told by the proconsul, "You 
ought to have obeyed the edict," and answered, " I care only for God's law now ; 
for this I will die, in this I become perfect ; beside this there is no other." 




DECIUS. 



CHAPTER XI. 



GALERIUS AND MAXIMIN. 




N the year 304, Diocletian went to Rome to celebrate 
a triumph, less glorious in modern eyes than those 
of the Scipios and other ancient heroes. Returning 
to Nicomedia, he had a long and mysterious illness. 
On recovering from this, he astonished the world by 
his abdication, and retired to a farm and palace near 
Salona, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic sea, in his 
native country of Dalmatia. Here he lived for eight 
years, planting cabbages and meditating on the vanity 
of earthly greatness. If he felt remorse for the cruel- 
ties he had allowed and practiced, he made no sign. 
Maximian Hercules was persuaded. or forced to abdi- 
cate also. They were succeeded by Galerius in the 
East, who made his nephew Maximin Duza his Caesar, 
and in the West by Constantius Chlorus and Maxen- 
tius, the latter a son of the retired Maximian. Licin- 
ius and Constantine also presently came to the front 
as associate emperors. If the modern reader finds it 
troublesome to keep in his mind so many royal names, 
the subjects of the empire groaned under the conflict- 
ing tyranny and enormous expense of so many royal 
establishments. The condition of the world, and 
especially of the eastern provinces, which at this time were considered the 
richest, most populous, and most important, is well described by Dean Milman: 
" The great scheme of Diocletian, the joint administration of the empire by 
associate Augusti with their subordinate Caesars, if it had averted for a time the 
dismemberment of the empire, and had introduced some vigor into the provincial 
governments, had introduced other evils of appalling magnitude; but its fatal con- 
sequences were more manifest directly the master hand was withdrawn which 
had organized the new machine of government. Fierce jealousy succeeded at 
once, among the rival emperors, to decent concord ; all subordination was lost ; 
and a succession of civil wars between the contending sovereigns distracted the 
whole world. The earth groaned under the separate tyranny of its many 

(175) 



176 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



masters ; and, according to the strong expression of a rhetorical writer, the 
grinding taxation had so exhausted the proprietors and the cultivators of the 
soil, the merchants and the artisans, that none remained to tax but beggars. The 
sufferings of the Christians, though still inflicted with unremitting barbarity, 
were lost in the common sufferings of mankind. The rights of Roman citizen- 
ship, which had been violated in their persons, were now universally neglected * 
and, to extort money, the chief persons of the towns, the unhappy decurions, who 
were responsible for the payment of the contributions, were put to the torture. 
Even the roasting by a slow fire, invented to force the conscience of the devout 
Christians, was borrowed, in order to wring the reluctant impost from the un- 
happy provincial." Such, in remote ages, had been the usage of oriental 




REMAINS OF A ROMAN AQUEDUCT. 



despotism, which the emperors now imitated; such is still the wretched practice 
in Turkey and other Mohammedan lands. 

In Italy the faithful no longer suffered for their faith ; if they still resorted 
to the catacombs, it was rather from precaution than from fear of active enemies. 
Maxentius was a loose reprobate, dangerous to all men's wives and daughters 
alike. " If a Christian matron, the wife of a senator, submitted to a voluntary 
death rather than to the loss of her honor, it was her beauty, not her Chris- 
tianity, which marked her out as the victim of the tyrant." In France and 
Britain believers were protected, as far as possible, by Constantius and his 
greater son, who succeeded him in 306. But in the East their condition was no 
way bettered, for the Caesar Maximin was the worthy pupil of his uncle Galerius. 
Apologies may be made for some earlier persecutors ; but these two, though 




177 



178 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

not without ability, were bloodthirsty tyrants. Even on grounds of policy they 
can hardly be defended, for the stars in their courses fought against them, and 
by this time not only the best brain and conscience of the empire, but a large 
share of its population, was Christian. They lived to retrace their steps, to 
withdraw their edicts, and to confess that their atrocities had been a huge 
mistake. 

For all that could be done had no other effect than this, to winnow the grain 
and separate the tares from the wheat. The followers of Jesus might lose 
their bravest and best ; but the spirit of these survived, their example animated 
many. Now, as always, the blood of the martyrs was the Church's seed. The 
survivors met in secret, they preserved their sacred books, they would not give 
up their principles. They were too many to be exterminated, too firm to be 
overcome. The inborn sense of human rights, the modern reverence for con- 
science, were constantly displayed by the confessors in an age when all other in- 
fluences tended to slavishness. 

ASIATIC MARTYRS. 

Appian, a young man of education, coming to Csesarea, was bold enough 
to interrupt Urban the governor in his public sacrifices, and to reprove his 
idolatry : after fearful tortures he was thrown into the sea. Incited rather than 
dismayed by this example, his brother ^desius, seeing Hierocles giving over 
virgins to abuse at Alexandria, expressed his manly indignation, and even struck 
the magistrate ; he was treated as Appian had been. At Gaza, a woman, being 
threatened with violation, spoke her mind freely about an emperor who could 
employ as judges such ministers of impurity. Another, dragged by force to an 
altar, threw it down. Taracus, Probus, and Andronicus, who were martyred at 
Tarsus in Cilicia (St. Paul's native town), used plain language to the magis- 
trates : one of them, on being required to sacrifice to Jupiter, cried out, "What ! 
to him who married his sister — that loose liver, that adulterer, as all the poets 
testify ?" They had cast away all care for their lives, and they valued truth more 
highly than politeness. 

But the martyrs were oftener as eminent for meekness as for courage. Paul, 
one of the many victims in Palestine, on being sentenced, asked for a brief 
respite, and used it in praying aloud for the Church, the Jews, the Samaritans, the 
heathen, the emperors, the judge, and the executioner, so fervently and forgiv- 
ingly that those who stood by were moved. Agapius did not murmur when 
sentenced at Csesarea to be thrown to wild beasts with a slave who had murdered 
his master ; nor when Maximin, celebrating his birthday in the usual inhuman 
fashion, gave pardon and freedom to the murderer, and cast the Christian to a 
bear — another case of " Not this man, but Barabbas." Grievously torn, he was 
carried back to prison, and the next day flung into the sea. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



179 



STORY OF DOROTHEA. 

The human motive and heavenl}^ hope which supported these martyrs is set 
forth in the legend of Dorothea of Antioch, on which Milman has built a drama. 
Young, tender, and delicately reared like Perpetua of Carthage, she was tormented 
for an hour on an engine like the rack of later days, and then given over to two 
of her former friends, recent apostates. Instead of their persuading her to sacri- 
fice, she prevailed on them to return to Christ and to suffer for Him. After a 




THEATRE OF MAKCELLUS, ROME. 

second contest, when life was ebbing fast, she was ordered to the block ; but first 
the governor asked her if she would beg forgiveness of the gods. She said, "I 
pray for your forgiveness, and I will pray for it in the land whither I am going." 
"And what sort of land is that ? " he inquired, in the spirit of Pilate's question, 
;( What is truth ? " But she answered seriously : "A land of perpetual light and 
of everlasting spring. There is no night, no winter, no sorrow. There is the 
river of the water of life, clear as crystal, and the tree of life that yields its fruit 
•every month. There are unfading flowers, and a paradise of joy." 



i8o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



The pagans were capable of any brutality. By way of jest, one of her old 
companions said to the dying girl, "And when you come to that land, send me 

some of those flowers." She 
looked him in the eye, and 
said — they were her last 
words— "I will." A few 
minutes later, as they were 
going, a wonderfully beauti- 
ful boy came to them, in his 
hands four roses, two red, 
two white, such as none had 
seen before. "Dorothea 
sends you these," he said, 
and disappeared. The boy 
was an angel, and the roses 
grew in no earthly garden. 
The legend goes on to say 
that he who asked for them 
and received them, one 
Theophilus, at once pro- 
The Church commemorated 




FRAGMENT OF A ROMAN FRESCO. 



fessed himself a Christian, and was beheaded 
these martyrs on the sixth of February. 

About 308 the persecu- 
tion slackened ; the con- 
fessors in the mines of 
Palestine were more mildly 
treated, and even allowed 
to erect rude buildings for 
their worship. But soon the 
storm burst forth again : 
a new edict required that 
the pagan temples be re- 
stored which had fallen to 
decay, snd all citizens 
obliged to offer sacrifice : 
the eatables offered in the 
markets were to be 
sprinkled with wine or 
water which had been used 
in idol-worship, so that the 
Christians might be forced into contact with what they abhorred, or compelled to 




FROM A ROMAN FRESCO. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 181 

starve. And now the old scenes were repeated : " those who submitted performed 
the hated ceremony with visible reluctance, with trembling hand, averted coun- 
tenance, and deep remorse of heart : those who resisted to death were animated 
by the presence of multitudes who, if they dared not applaud, could scarcely 
conceal their admiration. Women crowded to kiss the hems of their garments ; 
and their scattered ashes or unburied bones were stolen away by the devout zeal 
of their adherents, and already began to be treasured as incentives to faith and 
piety." 

EDICT OF TOLERATION. 

At length Galerius was seized by the hideous disease which has ended the 
lives of other persecutors and voluptuaries — Antiochus Epiphanes, Herod the 
Great, Philip II. of Spain. For months he lay in agony, and the palace was 
infected by the stench of his ulcers. While thus bearing tortures as great as 
any he had inflicted, he attempted at once to justify and to change his course in 
this extraordinary edict, in which the names of Licinius and Constantine are 
added to his own : 

"Among the weighty cares which have occupied our mind for the welfare of 
the state, it was our intent to correct and re-establish all things after the ancient 
Roman law and discipline. Especially we wished to recall to the way of reason 
and nature the deluded Christians, who had renounced the religion and usages of 
their fathers, and presumptuously despising the practice of antiquity, had in- 
vented extravagant laws and opinions at the dictates of their fancy, and collected 
a varying society from the different provinces of our empire. The edicts we have 
published to enforce the worship of the gods have exposed man}' of the Chris- 
tians to danger and distress : many have suffered death, and many more, who still 
presist in their impious folly, are deprived of any public exercise of religion. We 
are therefore disposed to extend to these unhappy meu the effects of our wonted 
•clemency. We permit them freely to profess their opinions, and to assemble in 
their conventicles without fear or hindrance, provided they keep a due respect to 
the laws and government. We shall declare our intentions to the magistrates by 
another letter ; and we hope that our indulgence will engage the Christians to 
offer up their prayers to the Deity whom they worship, for our safety and pros- 
perity, for their own, and for that of the commonwealth." 

Here was a strange thing — a persecutor asking the prayers of those he 
had striven to exterminate for what he still called " their impious folly." But 
Galerius was soon past praying for : he died in 311, leaving four emperors con- 
tending which should rule the world ; and of these the worthless Maxentius was 
drowned a year after. 

Constantine and Licinius were glad to protect the Christians ; but Maximin, 
whose name had not been added to the edict of toleration, was of another temper. 
A bigoted pagan and a ruthless despot, he planned new attacks while he seemed to 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 183 

obey the edict of his uncle. " The prison doors were thrown open, the mines 
rendered up their condemned laborers. Everywhere long trains of Christians 
were seen hastening to the ruins of their churches, and visiting the places sanc- 
tified by their former devotion. The public roads, the streets and market-places of 
the towns, were crowded with long processions, singing psalms of thanksgiving 
for their deliverance. Those who had maintained their faith under their severe 
trials passed triumphant in conscious, even if lowly pride, amid the flattering 
congratulations of their brethren : those who had failed in the hour of afflic- 
tion hastened to reunite themselves with their God, and to obtain readmission 
into the flourishing and reunited fold. The heathen themselves were astonished, 
it is said, at this signal mark of the power of the Christians' God, who had thus 
unexpectedly wrought so sudden a revolution in favor of His worshippers.'' For 
many years these battle-marked confessors, piteous remnants of men, with bodies 
scarred and twisted, many lacking an arm, a foot, an eye, held the place of honor 
in Christian assemblies, and were looked upon with reverence. 

CUNNING MEASURES OF MAXIMIN. 

But within a year Maximin, who now aimed to extend his dominions, had 
arrayed the pagan interest against the Christians. New and subtle devices were 
employed, and a profane ingenuity set to work to discredit their religion and its 
Founder. False Acts of Pilate were forged and circulated, the streets were pla- 
carded with slanders : these blasphemies were made text-books in schools, set to 
music, and sung or recited everywhere. The old libels were revised ; vile women 
of Damascus were induced to pretend that they had taken part in Christian orgies, 
and their false testimony, by Maximin's express command, was published 
through the empire. The judicious might not believe these tales ; but all were 
not judicious, and the faithful were thus wounded in two very tender places, — their 
purity, and their regard for the honor of the faith. They were used to being 
called atheists, impious, seditious ; but now, in the very hour of their victory, to 
have it believed that their sacred books taught them to conceive and practice foul- 
ness was hard indeed. 

The emperor next took pains to restore the old religion with new improve- 
ments, borrowed from the Church. He appointed persons of rank and wealth as 
priests in all the cities, and gave them power to compel the attendance of all 
citizens at the sacrifices, which were performed with unusual pomp. He procured 
addresses from Antioch, Nicomedia, Tyre, and other places, begging him to drive 
out the enemies of the gods. With artful malignity, he invited Christians of 
position to feasts, and set before them meats that had been offered to idols. 
Many of humbler station were mutilated : a few, including the bishops of Alex- 
andria, Antioch, and Emesa, were put to death, or died in prison. 

Maximin's answer to the petition of the people of Tyre is still preserved. 
He praises their zeal, laments the obstinate impiety of the Christians, cheerfully 



184 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



agrees to the banishment of them, and authorizes the priests to inflict any punish- 
ment short of execution. In particular he points out the benefits received from 
the heathen gods, who have smiled upon the land and kept off plague, drought, 
earthquake, and tempest. 

But it would not do. These very calamities were about to fall upon the 
East, exhausted by the emperor's tyranny, and enraged by his insolent vices. 
His officers went through the provinces to collect recruits for his harem, using 
force on occasion. The noblest families were not secure ; their daughters, where 




COLUMNS OF TEMPLE AT LUXOR. 

he had had his will, were married to slaves or barbarians. Valeria, the daughter 
of Diocletian and widow of Galerius, was handsome and wealthy ; he wished to 
marry her, and she refused. Her estates were confiscated, her servants tortured, 
her friends put to death, her fair reputation assailed, and she and her mother 
Prisca banished, and at length, through the strange cruelty of Licinius, beheaded 
and their bodies thrown into the sea. Diocletian, from his retirement, in vain 
tried to protect them ; and the world beheld with amazement two empresses 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 185 

treated like common criminals. Their fate could hardly have been more cruel 
if they had been really Christians ; and we know nothing of their character to 
contradict the rumor that they were so. 

VICTORY OF THE CHURCHES. 

Meantime the evils which Maximin praised the gods for averting — drought, 
famine, pestilence — came heavily upon Asia. The court lived in luxury, and the 
soldiers plundered freely, while the people starved. In the general distress, pity 
and help came only from the Christians. ''They were everywhere, tending the 
living and burying the dead. They distributed bread ; they visited the infected 
houses ; they scared away the dogs which preyed in open day upon the bodies in 
the streets, and rendered to them the decent honors of burial. The myriads who 
had perished and were perishing, in a state of absolute desertion, could not but 
acknowledge that Christianity was stronger than love of kindred." The Church, 
just emerging from long and fierce persecution, displayed her proper character in 
loving her enemies and returning good for evil. 

Maximin had attacked the Christian Kingdom of Armenia with doubtful 
success ; he was still less fortunate in his contest with Licinius. He is said to 
have vowed, before the battle, to abolish the Christian name, if Jupiter would 
give him victory ; and, after his defeat, to have massacred the pagan priests who 
had flattered him with vain hopes and urged him to the war. In the same spirit 
he issued an edict of toleration, more complete than one a little before, which 
the Christians had been too wise to trust : he now even restored their church-lands 
which had been taken from them. This was his last official act. Stricken with a 
sore disease, his body wasted away as from an inward fire. If we may believe 
Eusebius, he died the death of Galerius and other persecutors, crying in his 
agony, " It was others, not I, who did it," and imploring help from the Christ 
whom he had fought in vain. 

His death, in the year 313, removed the Church's last dangerous human 
enemy. The other emperors had already established toleration in Europe ; and 
Constantine, a year before, had seen, or pretented to see, a bright cross in the sky, 
with the inscription, " In this sign you shall conquer." From that time the cross 
was upon his banner, and the emblem of the Prince of Peace was carried in the 
front of every battle. 

The connection of Licinius with the Christians was merely a matter of policy. 
He afterwards put himself at the head of the pagan party, closed the churches 
of Pontus in Asia Minor, tore some of them down, and caused or allowed some 
of the clergy to be put to death ; but the battle of Hadrianople ended his power 
in 323, and the Church, no longer oppressed, became established throughout the 
empire. Except during the brief reign of Julian (361-363) who inflicted only 
the mildest penalties, her enemies and dangers were thenceforth within : except 



i86 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



in remote and barbarous regions, her ministers and people had nothing to fear 
from giant Pagan. The age of heathen rule was over. Our succeeding chapters 
must record the dissensions of Christians among themselves, the sufferings which 
— not understanding their Master's mind, or lacking His gentle and benignant 
spirit — they inflicted upon each other. 





CHAPTER XII. 

THE AGES OF DOCTRINE. 

HK establishment of Christianity as 
the religion of the Roman empire 
was attended by certain inevitable 
evils. It opened the door wide to all 
the corruptions of the world : it 
brought in the power, wealth, and 
pomp of a state Church, with the 
intricacies of an elaborate theology,, 
in place of the simplicity of the first 
centuries ; and it put the Christians 
in a position to inflict the punish- 
ments they had previously endured. 
The theories of government were 
unchanged, and non-conformity, in 
the shape of paganism or heresy, 
now became the objects of attack. 
The Jews were still protected, but it 
was thought necessary to fix heavy 
penalties for any who threw stones 
at a Christian convert from the 
synagogue, and for any Christian 
who became a Jew. Among the first 
measures of Constantine, after he got rid of his rivals and became sole emperor, 
was the attempted suppression of the Arian and Donatist sects. Their meet- 
ings were prohibited, their churches and writings destroyed, their bishops 
sent into exile, and death threatened against those who concealed their books. 
Executions were rare, for the Christian sentiment was at first strong against 
taking life. 

The heathen were still so numerous that it was not expedient to push them 
to extremes. Constantius II. did more in this direction than his father. Magic 
and divination were forbidden ; those who practiced them were to be thrown to 
wild beasts in Rome, and in the provinces to be tortured and then crucified. 

This was carried further bv Valeus, who was an Arian, and persecuted all who 

(187) 



188 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

differed from the views of that sect. Among his victims were a philosopher, who 
wrote to his wife to hang a crown over her door ; an old woman who tried to cure 
a fever by repeating a charm ; and a youth, who sought relief from sickness by 
touching a marble pillar, and saying a. e, z, <?, u. If all who use such remedies 
in our own day and land were to be punished, our prisons and police-courts 
would be wofully overworked. 

We have no clear and full account of the suppression of paganism. It was 
not left to die a natural death, though no such systematic cruelties were exercised 




ARCH OF CONSTANTINE. 

npon its votaries as the Christians had endured under Decius and Diocletian. 
Edicts were aimed chiefly at the temples, rather than at their worshippers. The 
words pagan and heathen (countryman) both show that the old faith lingered in 
rural parts long after it had ceased to lift its head in the cities. Libanius, who 
had been the minister of Julian, protested in vain against the destruction of the 
temples. They were to the poor peasants, he said, " the very eye of Nature, the 
symbol and manifestation of a present Deity, the solace of all their troubles, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 189 

the holiest of all their joys. If these were overthrown, their dearest associa- 
tions would be annihilated. The tie that linked them to the dead would be 
severed. The poetry of life, the consolation of labor, the source of faith, would 
be destroyed." One may without shame own to a little human sympathy with 
those who had to stand by and see their sacred buildings torn down. Many 
may have lost their lives in trying to defend them ; and we read of one bishop 
who too zealously aided the work of destruction and was killed in a riot of this 




JULIAN. 

kind. But the old religion was doomed ; it had been weighed in the balance and 
found wanting. It had to perish, with all its adjuncts ; and a decaying cause 
has no historians and leaves few friends. By the end of the fourth century all 
the pagan sanctuaries, except in the city of Rome, are said to have disappeared, 
or been turned to Christian use. St. Augustine, who died A. D. 430, says that a 
sentence of death was incurred by any who celebrated the old rites, and that this 
severity met the unanimous approval of Christians. 



xqo THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

RISE OF THEOLOGIES. 

There is no lack of information as to the divisions of the Chnrch and their 
tragic consequences. The Theodosian code, compiled in the first half of the 
fifth century, besides many laws against pagans, Jews, magicians, and apostates, 
has sixty-six against heretics. It is probable that these were freely and vigor- 
ously enforced. But there was one embarrassing fact : what was considered 
heresy at one time or place might be orthodoxy under another emperor, or in 
another province. The term heresy, which at first meant division, schism, had 
come to indicate error in doctrinal opinion. The proverb, " Many men, many 
minds," was true then hardly less than now. Since " many minds" produce differ- 
ences of opinion, the only way to avoid heresy was to induce men not to use their 
brains with reference to their religion. Plain people might believe what they 
were told ; but the leaders of the Church were obliged to meditate deeply upon 
the doctrines they were evolving. No race has had such a gift for subtle and 
abstract thought as the Greeks, and no age has done so much work in hammer- 
ing out theological systems as did the fourth and fifth centuries. It was a long 
time before this task was finished and a result substantially agreed on ; and till 
then there was much ill-feeling and not a little bloodshed over the varying 
human interpretations of divine truth. 

The most troublesome difference was between the orthodox, whose views 
were finally fixed upon Christendom, and the followers of Arius, a priest of 
Alexandria. The Arian doctrines have since been generally condemned, not 
only because the Church decided against them, but because, as one of the most 
eminent Unitarian divines of our day has pointed out, they made Christ neither 
God nor man, but something between the two. The famous Council of Nice, A. D. 
325, inserted in its creed the word homoousion, u of one (or the same) substance" 
with the Father. The Arians would not agree to this, but used instead the ex- 
pression homoiousion, of similar substance. These long and closely resembling 
words were used as war-cries by the mobs of Alexandria, when the two factions 
rushed upon each other in the streets. 

Incredible as this may appear, it was but a sign of the times. The most 
delicate subtleties of doctrine,. whether men could understand them or not, were 
supposed to be vital matters, to be defended with life or contested at the peril 
of one's soul. Few modern worshippers could follow the minute distinctions of 
the so-called Athanasian Creed ; but for centuries it was held that " whoever 
would be saved must before all things believe" them. In all good faith and 
earnestness, the fathers of the fourth century 

" Fondly essayed to intertwine 
Earth's shadows with the light divine." 

"A prudent heathen," quoted by Jeremy Ta}dor, complained that the 
emperor Constantius "mixed the Christian religion, plain and simple in itself, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



iar 



with a weak and foolish superstition, perplexing to examine but useless to con- 
trive, and excited dissensions which were widely diffused and maintained with a 
war of words." As Mr. Lecky says, " However strongly the Homoousians and 
Homoiousians were opposed on other points, they were at least perfectly agreed 
that the adherents of the wrong creed could not possibly get to heaven, and that 
the highest conceivable virtues were futile when associated with error." 



JULIAN. 

The consequences of these changed views were obvious and inevitable. 
The Church in its beginning was a brotherhood, with faithful allegiance to 




BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. 

Christ as its leading principle : it now became, especially in its chief assemblies, 
a debating-club and a battle-ground. It had been said of old, "See how these 
Christians love one another!" The emperor Julian had a saying, "No wild 
beasts are so ferocious as angry theologians." Too wise to persecute, it was 
his favorite amusement to get a few divines of different sects together and set 



192 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



them by the ears. A painting of our time represents him thus occupied and 
smiling in cynical delight, while his guests nearly came to blows. To encourage 
these dissensions, to exclude the Christians from the schools and from some posts 
of honor, to satirize the wealth and fashion which had come in among them, and 
to restore the pagan rites and emblems, were the only revenge he took for the 
murder of his family and his own embittered youth. His temper and his con- 
duct were milder than those of many who looked on him as Antichrist. A 
fanatical Arian bishop, old and blind, once rudely interrupted him at a sacrifice. 

"Peace," said the 
emperor, "your 
Galilean God will 
not restore your 
sight." "I thank 
my God," the 
intruder cried, 
"for the blind- 
ness which 
spares me the 
sight of an 
apostate." Ju- 
lian gave no 
heed to the 
insult, but 
calmly went 
on sacrificing. 
If some 
outrages ac- 
companied 
restoration of 
heathen wor- 
ship, especially in 
certain towns of 
Syria, it was not 
by any order of the 

emperor. A few soldiers were put to death for mutiny or breach of discipline, but 
in this reign no Christian suffered directly for his faith. Yet all the virtues and 
abilities of Julian could not turn the tide of destiny, nor galvanize the corpse of 
paganism into life. His early death caused vast rejoicing among the Christians, 
who feared another persecution. One would like to believe the legend that as 
he lay dying from a Persian javelin, he threw a handful of his blood into the 
air, and cried, "Thou hast conquered, Galilean!" But the tale is rather well 




CONSTANTIUS II. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



*93 



invented than well supported. His successors were not his equals, but at least 
they were on the side of Providence. 

The best opinion of the Fathers of that age is thus expressed by Chrysos- 
tom : " We should condemn heresies, but spare and pray for heretics." St. Am- 
brose of Milan went so far as to say, " Neither the state nor the Church has a 
right to forbid your saying what you think." But this was by no means the 
prevalent view ; indeed, he would have probably gone on to say that you ought 
to think only what is orthodox. The great St. Augustine held for awhile that 
it is wrong to do any violence to misbelievers ; but he afterwards modified that 
judgment, and settled upon this : " No good men approve of inflicting death on 
any one, though he be a heretic." When two obscure French bishops, in the 
year 385, procured the execution of some members of an equally- obscure sect, 
St. Martin of Tours indignantly denounced their conduct, and refused to hold 
communion with them ; and . ^frfta^ 

Sulpitius very justly said, 
"The example was worse 
than the men. If they were 
heretical, to execute them 
was unchristian." The hu-l 
manizing influence of the 
gospel had produced, at 
least in its best disciples, 
a feeling against all shed- 
ding of human blood, and 
especially that the Church 
and the clergy ought to 
have no hand in it. In later ages this degenerated into the hypocritical farce 
of handing over a culprit to the secular arm, with a formal plea for mercy — 
which meant that he was to be burned alive. 

But the emperors, their officers, and the baser sort of private persons, were not 
always restrained by these sentiments. Gibbon, who habitually makes the most 
of the cruelties of Christians, and as little as possible of those inflicted on them 
by the heathen, has filled pages with the brutalities and disorders of this era. An 
Arian bishop, receiving authority from Constantine, used strange methods to force 
the Catholics of Thrace and Asia Minor into his communion. " The sacraments 
were administered to the reluctant victims, who denied the vocation and abhorred 
the principles of Macedonius. The rites of baptism were conferred on women 
and children who for that purpose had been torn from the arms of their friends 
and parents. The mouths of the communicants were held open by a wooden 
instrument, while the consecrated bread was forced down their throats. The 
same extraordinary missionary attempted to convert — or else to exterminate — 




MEDAL OF THEODORIUS. 



i 9 4 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

the Novatians of a district in the north of Asia Minor, and took with him 
four thousand soldiers for the purpose. The peasants, driven to despair, 
attacked the troops with their scythes and axes, and killed almost all of them, 
with heavy loss to themselves. In western Africa the members of a Donatist 
sect, angry at the banishment of their bishop and other interferences, took to 
the desert, became brigands, slew many with their clubs, and kept two prov- 
inces disturbed for some time. Julian, who succeeded his cousin on the throne, 
says in one of his letters that in this reign " many were imprisoned, abused, 
and driven into exile. Whole troops of those who were called heretics were 
massacred, particularly at Cyzicus and at Samosata. In Paphlagonia, Bithynia 
Galatia, and many other provinces, towns and villages were laid waste and utterly 
destroyed." 

ATHANASIUS. 

The adventures of Athanasius, the great champion of orthodoxy against 
Arius, would, as Gibbon says, furnish "a very entertaining romance." He was 
repeatedly banished and constantly in danger. Many of his followers were slain 
in defending him from attack. Once, when the troops broke into the church, he 
refused to escape till he had dismissed the congregation, and then slipped away in 
the darkness. Once he hid in a dry cistern, and had just left it when the place 
was disclosed by a slave. Once, at midnight, he suddenly appeared in the house 
of a maiden of rank and wealth, famous for her beauty, and said a vision had 
sent him there : she kept him, in innocence and absolute secrecy, till the danger 
was over. From his hiding-places he wrote innumerable letters, and kept his 
finger on the pulse of the time. In disguise, and protected by friends in every 
city, he traveled over half the world, and witnessed the proceedings of two 
councils, unsuspected by his enemies. Dean Milman thinks that his immense 
energies and indomitable spirit were spent on too small a cause. " During two 
reigns he contested the emperors' authority. He endured persecution, calumny, 
exile ; his life was frequently endangered in defense of one single tenet, and that, 
it may be permitted to say, the most purely intellectual, and apparently the most 
remote from the ordinary passions of man : he confronted martyrdom, not for the 
broad and palpable distinction between Christianity and heathenism, but For the 
fine and subtle expressions of the creed. He began and continued the comest 
not for the toleration, but for the supremacy, of his own opinions." But this 
is not the view usually held. He has generally been revered as a rare moral 
hero, as the greatest character, if not the greatest intellect, of his age, standing, 
"the world against him, he against the world," for what he believed the truth 
of God and the honor of his Master. And if success be the test of merit, his 
merit was of the highest, for he succeeded in imposing his opinions upon the 
great bulk of Christendom, Catholic and schismatic, Roman, Greek, and Protest- 




DF.ATH OF JULIAN, THE APOSTATE. 



195 



196 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

ant, to our own day. If we do not now use the Athanasian Creed (which is of 
later date), at least nine-tenths of Europe and America still profess the faith of 
Athanasius. 

The Arian controversy, however, gave much trouble throughout the fourth, 
century. Valens, who ruled the East from 367 to 378, persecuted the orthodox;, 
and some of the barbarian tribes, who were now overrunning the western prov- 
inces, received Christianity in an Arian form, and displayed much ignorant and. 
disorderly zeal in its behalf. But these disturbances formed a very small part 
of the miseries which fell upon the empire. A time of change had come : the 
old civilization had to perish, that on its ruins, after the lapse of many hundred 
years, a new and better order might arise. Christianity could not save the old 
system of government and society, doomed by its own vices. "The glory that 
was Greece " had long been but a memory ; " the grandeur that was Rome " was 
rotten with the satiated lust of conquest and of luxury. These mighty races 
had had their day : their successors needed to receive the slow education of ages. 
During the dreary process learning, literature, the arts, almost the power of 
thinking, died out, or became the lonely prerogative of a few. 

THE DARK AGES. 

During this long period, from the sixth to the twelfth century, "religious per- 
secution was rare. The principle was indeed fully admitted, and whenever the 
occasion called for it it was applied ; but heresies scarcely ever appeared, and the 
few that arose were insignificant." A collection of canon laws compiled about 10 i 8^ 
contains none on the punishment of heresy. Certain executions in the eleventh 
century were conducted by princes or mobs, and seem to have been disapproved 
by the Church. About 1045 the Bishop of Liege, being appealed to concerning 
some Manicheans, urged that their lives should be spared; since God had 
patience with them, men might do the same. Abelard, a famous French the- 
ologian and one of the ablest men of his time, taught dubious opinions about 
the Trinity; but when St. Bernard procured his condemnation in 1140, there was 
no thought of putting him to death ; to destroy his reputation and take away his 
liberty was enough. Dean Milman says that many of the well-fed bishops and 
abbots who condemned Abelard, having dined or been hunting just before, took 
little interest in the proceedings. While the fiery Bernard arrayed his proofs and 
poured forth his indignant eloquence, they slumbered in their seats ; and being 
roused to pronounce on each successive count in the indictment, they would lift 
their heads, half open their eyes, murmur " Damnamiis" ("we condemn him"i, 
"^namus" and go to sleep again. Abelard was a heretic, and heresy was not to be 
allowed : that was enough ; they did not care for the particulars. 

But these mild measures were soon to be exchanged for sterner ones. 
Arnold of Brescia, a pupil of Abelard, boldly rebuked the wealth and vices of" 




BURNING OF A HERETIC. 



197 



198 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 




the clergy, and was burned at Rome in 
1 1 54, leaving many followers, who were 
condemned by several popes and soon 
united with the Waldenses. 

THE WALDENSES. 

Peter Waldo, a rich merchant of 
Lyons, had the New Testament and 
some extracts from the Fathers of the 
early Church translated into the Ro- 
mance language. Becoming convinced 
V^t that these precepts were not obeyed, he 
n\ gave away his property, took to the 

^l work of an evangelist, trained or started 

many other preachers, and exerted a 
wide influence. For a time he was 
recognized by the pope ; but the Poor 
Men of Lyons, as his disciples called 
themselves, soon became obnoxious, and 
M were condemned by several councils in 



VAI.I.EY OF ANGROGUA, A HIDING PLACE OF THE WALDENSES. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



99 



1 184 and later. They denied the authority of popes and bishops, and some of 
them disbelieved in purgatory. They held that God is to be obeyed rather than 
man ; that laymen and women may preach ; that prayers may be offered as well 
in a private room, a stable, or anywhere else, as in church ; that masses and 
prayers for the dead are unavailing ; and that the services of the clergy are of 
value only in proportion to their characters. 

These doctrines struck at the root of the whole Church system as it then 
existed. The Waldenses, who were extremely active and spread everywhere, soon 
became objects of general attack. In Spain they were outlawed by Alonzo II. of 
Aragon in 1194, and three years later condemned to the flames by Pedro. II. 
In the south of France they were confounded with the Albigenses, a different 
sect, of which we shall hear more presently, and involved in their destruction. 
They were burned in Strasburg in 1212. Some of them fled to Bohemia, where 
their bishop, long after, consecrated those of the United Brethren. For centuries 
they were heard of in northern Italy, where their descendants survive to the 
present day. 

An early inquisitor thus describes these people: "Heretics may be known 
by their customs and speech, for they are modest and well ordered. They take 
no pride in their clothes, which are neither costly nor vile. They avoid lies and 
oaths and frauds ; they are not traders but mechanics ; their teachers are cob- 
blers. They gather no wealth, but are content with things needful. They are 
chaste, and temperate in meat and drink. They do not frequent taverns, dances, 
or other vanities. They refrain from anger. They are always at work. They 
are to be known by their modesty and precision of speech ; they hate light, pro- 
fane, and violent language." St. Bernard, who delighted to persecute them, and 
who died in 1153, has given similar testimony as to the followers of Arnold: "-If 
you question them, nothing can be more Christian : their talk is blameless, and 
what they speak they prove by deeds. As to the morals of the heretic, he cheats 
no one, he oppresses no one, he strikes no one. His cheeks are pale with fast- 
ing; he eats not the bread of idleness, his hands labor for his livelihood." But 
in those days an error of opinion was counted far worse than any faults of 
character. 




CHAPTER XIII. 




THE ALBIGENSES. 



HE most dreaded sect of the Middle Ages was 

that of the Manichees. Its founder, Manes, who 

lived in Persia in the third century, believed in 

the existence of two equal Principles, good and 

divided the universe between them. Matter, he 

ught, was accursed ; this world was made and governed 

Y the devil, who had also inspired the Old Testament. The 

Dspels, on the contrary, were the work of God, whose Son 

;sumed the mere appearance of a man to overthrow the 

ingdoin of evil. 

These wild notions, somewhat modified in the course of 
time, spread through southern Europe. In spite of frequent 
persecutions, these people, the Paulicians, or the Cathari, as 
they were afterwards generally called, gathered multitudes of 
converts, who clung to their doctrines with fanatical enthu- 
siasm. They were numerous in what is now Bulgaria, and in 
the whole region between the Black sea and the Adriatic. When 
the first crusaders were on their way to the Holy Land in 1097, 
they heard of a city called Pelagonia, belonging to these people ; 
so, by way of practicing their swords for the slaughter of Mo- 
hammedans, they destroyed and massacred all its inhabitants. 
But a calamity like this had little effect on their progress. 
They had founded Tran, on the gulf-of Venice, which became 
their headquarters : and by the end of the tenth century they 
were established in the south of France, where they grew and 
throve mightily. 

Their views were almost as peculiar as at the start. 
Believing in a warfare of the spirit against the flesh, they 
rejected marriage (except under narrow restrictions), animal 
food, and the gratification of the senses in any form. That is, the stricter among 
them did ; for it is hardly to be supposed that most members of the sect took 

these precepts literally. Yet, strange to say, their lives were pure and innocent. 

(200) 




THE FIRST CRUSADERS, ON THEIR WAY TO THE 



HOLY LAND, DESTROYING THE PAUUCIAN CITY 
OF PELAGONIA. 



20 1 



202 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Vulgar superstition credited them, as it had the primitive Christians, with devil- 
worship, the murder of children, and horrible secret orgies ; but their persecutors 
testified with shame that their moral standards were much above those generally 
observed in the Church of Rome. 

Yet they were not without the wisdom of this world. Though their priests 
were in theory merely teachers, they had a strict organization, and a hierarchy 
like that of the Church. Most of them were poor and plain people, especially 
weavers ; but they had learned theologians, and an extensive literature, very 
little of which survives. Their zealous missionaries used much of the serpent's 
cunning, pretending to be Catholics and promising indulgences to those who would 
read and circulate their tracts ; in this way many priests were deceived. To 
ridicule the worship of the Virgin Mary, they made an image of her as one-eyed 
and deformed, to illustrate the humility of our Lord, who had chosen such a 
mean and unattractive person to be His mother. With this they worked counter- 
feited cures and miracles, till the image gained a great reputation and was copied 
for various orthodox churches ; then they exposed the trick. Other deceptions 
they wrought in various ways. 

Their conduct under persecution varied so much that we must remember 
the existence of certain less rigorous sects among them, and still more the dis- 
tinction always made between the Perfect, or completely initiated, and the 
ordinary believers. Among the latter may have been, many hangers-on or half- 
members — as always in other religious bodies — on whom worldly considerations 
exerted more or less force. These, when their faith was tired, would recant and 
profess whatever was required of them. There may also have been dispensa- 
tions for preserving specially valuable lives ; for some leading laymen, without 
apparently incurring blame, would be good Catholics when the crusaders came 
among them, and stout Cathari when the peril was over. But most of them 
exhibited a constancy equal to that of any primitive Christian — often, indeed, 
amounting to a half-insane fanaticism. Mr. Lea, the historian of the Inquisition, 
declares that "No relgion can show a more unbroken roll of those who unshrink- 
ingly and joyfully sought death in its most abhorrent form, in preference to 
apostacy. If the blood of the martyrs were really the seed of the Church, 
Manicheism would now be the dominant religion of Europe." It is to be remem- 
bered that these people, when really indoctrinated, believed that the flesh and 
everything visible were under a curse, and that by dying for their cause they 
escaped from the dominion of Satan, and passed at once into the abodes of bliss 
and the presence of the original good Deity. 

The mere name of heresy was usually enough to infuriate the mob, and 
in regions where the Cathari were not well known, they were much de- 
tested. When some of them were on trial at Orleans in 101 7, King Robert 
placed his queen at the door of the church to hinder the crowd from tearing 
them to pieces as they came out; but she was so angry that she struck one 




2<-"3 



204 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

of their leaders and put out his e}-e. There were fifteen of them ; all but two 
refused to recant, and perished in the flames, to the wonder of the beholders — 
such spectacles being then much less familiar than they afterwards became. 
A few years later some were burned in the north of Italy. About 1040 the 
Archbishop of Milan sent for others, who came freely, a countess among them, 
and professed their faith without reserve. In prison they tried to convert those 
who came to see them as curiosities, till the visitors dragged them out and 
burned most of them. In 1052 the Emperor Henry hanged some at Goslar in 
north Germany. But these were unusual occurrences in that century. It was 
in 1045 that the good Bishop Wazo of Liege counseled leniency, saying that 
"those whom the world now regards as tares may be garnered as wheat at the 
last harvest, and such as we think enemies of God He may place above us in 
heaven." Wazo was far ahead of his age. 

In the twelfth century religious executions became more common. Iu Italy 
those who did not believe in passive submission raised a civil war in 1125, 
and killed one of their chief persecutors iu 11 99. At Florence many were 
burned, hanged, or exiled in 1163. In the same year eight men and three 
women, who had fled from Flanders, confessed their faith before the Bishop of 
Cologne, and mightily impressed the bystanders by their cheerful readiness to 
suffer. The cords which bound their leader being partly severed by the flames, 
and the muscles of his arm not yet destroyed, he placed a mutilated hand on 
the heads nearest him, and said, "Be constant, for this day you shall be with 
Lawrence" — the famous saint of the gridiron, who had perished iu Rome nine 
hundred years before. The executioners, touched by the beauty and modesty 
of a girl among the victims, drew her from the fire and offered to fiud her a 
husband or place her in a convent. She feigned to agree till her friends were 
dead, and then suddenly covered her face and sprang into the flames. 

In England, three years later, another band of fugitives was found and 
tried at Oxford. In answer to all persuasions they repeated such of the Beat- 
itudes as best suited their case: "Blessed are they who are persecuted for 
righteousness' sake;" "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you." They were 
scourged, branded on the forehead, and driven out in the winter. A law was 
presently passed forbidding any to shelter them under heavy penalties, so that 
all the thirty soon died of hunger and exposure. This was almost the only 
known case of heresy in England till Wiclif 's time ; but in other lands they 
were abundant. A young canon of Rheims in the northeast of France, riding 
•out with a party in 11 So, tried to make love to a girl who was working in a 
vineyard. She replied that to listen to him would be to lose her soul. The 
archbishop, coming up, recognized the language of heresy and had her arrested, 
with one who had taught her. The older woman, on being questioned by 
orthodox divines, showed such knowledge of the Bible and such ability in 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



205 



argument as clearly proved her to bs inspired by the evil one. According to the 
tale, she flew away like a witch, but the girl was burned. We need not doubt 
the latter part of the story. In the neighboring country of Flanders, a year 
or two later, many were discovered, including noblemen, clerks, and soldiers, as 
well as poor mechanics and their wives, and many executed. 

IN LANGUEDOC AND PROVENCE. 

But in the south of France heresy was too strong to be easily repressed. 
The Bishop of Toulouse asked a knight of high repute why he did not expel 
the Cathari from his estates. " How can we ?" he answered. "We have been 




BRESCIA. 

brought up with these people ; we have 

kindred among them, and we see them 

live righteously." Here the fulmina- 

tions of popes and councils went for 

nothing. In 1165 the "good men" or 

"good Christians," as they called themselves, had a debate with the Catholics 

in presence of nobles and bishops, and cared not that the decision went against 

them. Two years later they held a council of their own near Toulouse, and 

elected five bishops for different parts of France; deputies from Italy attended, 

and the presiding officer was Nicetas of Constantinople, their chief dignitary,. 




CRUSADERS CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS. 



205 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



207 



Protestantism now Held its head aloft and openly defied the Church. In 11 79 
the kings of France and England sent a mission composed of sundry bishops. 
The people of Toulouse laughed at them and called them hypocrites to their 
faces. One layman of high position was scourged through the streets, heavily 
fined, and sent on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land ; under the force of this 
example many other timeservers recanted for the moment. Henry of Clairvaux 
thought that if the mission had been left till three years later, it would have 
found no Catholics at all in the city. When the three years had passed the 
same Henry, now cardinal of Albano and papal legate, headed a crusade which 
besieged Lavaur, caused two Catharan bishops and many others to -recant, and 
accomplished little more. 

The chief effect of these feeble measures was to encourage the Cathari. 
One writer of the time says that "Satan possessed in peace the greater part 
of southern France. The clergy were so despised that they were accustomed 

to conceal _~^^ v1 M-b i.l .,.<-.• Ve^^s^^" 38 ^* 
the tonsure 



through very 
shame, and 
the bishops 
were obliged ^ 
to admit to 
holy orders 
whoever was 
willing to as- 
sume them. 
The whole 
land, under a 
curse, pro- 
duced nothing 

but thorns and thistles, ravishers and bandits, robbers, and murderers." But it 
is true that brigands roved about in numbers and bestowed much ill usage on 
priests and monasteries. Another champion of Rome complains that the doc- 
trines of the Cathari had infected a thousand cities, and were in a way to 
corrupt all Europe if they had not been put down by force. A third asserts 
that "in Lombardy, Provence, and other regions there were more schools of this 
new religion than of the mother Church, with more scholars ; that they preached 
in the market-places, the fields, the houses ; and that there were none who dared 
to interfere with them, owing to the multitude and power of their protectors." 
They had schools for both sexes; they drew recruits from the ranks of their 
enemies. In one case "all the nuns of a convent embraced Catharism without 
quitting the house or the habit of their order." 




PERSECUTION OF ALBIGENSES. 



2o8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



RAYMOND OF TOULOUSE. 

The counts of Provence were practically independent sovereigns, and their 
court was considered the most refined and splendid in Europe. Thither resorted 
the troubadours, whose language, still spoken in that corner of France, is famous 
for its poetry. The land was rich, full of flowers, fanned by warm southern 
breezes ; its capital was the home of art, of elegant literature, of graceful luxury. 

— This charming cli- 
| mate and these light 
accomplishments 
fitted ill with the 
earth-hating asceti- 
cism of the severe 
religionists who had 
gathered there ; and 
Count Raymond VI. 
was the last man to 
lead a brave and 
resolute people 
against their invad- 
ers. Their loyalty 
to him was seldom 
justified by any act 
of his. Easy, care- 
less, selfish, vacillat- 




ing, 



he took both 



sides by turns, and 
was of little use to 
either. Most of his 
subjects were either 
Protestants or their 
protectors ; yet when 
pope and council 
demanded its sup- 
pression, he ranged 
himself on their side 
as his father had 
done, and strove in 
vain to save his pos- 
sessions by taking up arms against those who loved him far better than he: 
deserved. 



PENANCE OF RAYMOND 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



209 



In reality he cared little for religious questions. When he came to his own 
in 1 195, the Church in his dominions had fallen so low that the old Bishop of 
Toulouse, Fulcrand, had lost all influence and almost all income. His successor 
was justly deposed, and Foulkes, who came to the see early in the thirteenth 
century, said he was forced to water his mules with his own episcopal hands, 
having no servant to do it for him. He was not minded to endure this state 
of things, and the new pope, Innocent III, indignant at the count's indifference, 
marked Raymond for destruction and began to call for a crusade. 

For several years he called in vain. Raymond became more and more 
detested at Rome, till in 1207 one of the pope's legates excommunicated him, 




THE OLD FORTRESS TOWN" OF CARCASSONNE. 



and a year later was killed, as his friends claimed, at the count's instigation. 
This sacrilege roused the wrath of Christendom : an ordinary murder was of 
small account, but to touch a consecrated head, especially one commissioned 
by Christ's vicar, was the crime of crimes. The pope now issued the procla- 
mation usual in such cases, solemnly releasing Raymond's vassals from their 
allegiance, and offering his domains to whoever should seize them. Recruits 
came forward, and in Germany women, since they could not go to the war, 
thought they helped the good work by running and shouting through the streets. 
These domestic crusades were a great convenience to the popes when they 
had enemies to get even with. Their armies were to be paid only with the 
hope of plunder in this world and salvation in the next. Their sins in the 



2IO 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



past and for some time ahead were all pardoned, and on these terms they could 
commit any excesses they liked — short of heresy or sacrilege — with impunity. 
In the present case, the region to be chastised lying so near, the term of service 
was only forty days, and the indulgence, or forgiveness, just the same as for the 
long journey to the Holy Land. As the preachers of the crusade observed, it 
was not every day that paradise could be gained on such easy terms. The argu- 
ment was obvious and forcible, and the lords and ruffians of Europe responded — 
twenty thousand cavaliers, and over ten times as many footmen. 

Raymond was now alarmed, and with reason. He hastened to the nearest' 
legate, Arnaud, and offered to prove his innocence of the crimes imputed to him, 
but was sternly referred to Rome. His nephew, Roger of Beziers, advised him 
to resist, but he was not man enough for that. So he notified the pope of his 
submission, gave up seven of his strongest castles, and did public penance, being 
led through the church of St. Gilles with a rope round his neck, bare to the 
waist, and thrashed till the blood came, in view of a great and gaping crowd. 

This humiliation did not save him ; nor was it all he had to endure. He 
swore upon the gospels to obey and assist the crusaders who came to harry his 
dominions and murder his subjects ; and he fulfilled his oath as far as he was 
able. Impossibilities were exacted of him, and he was led on to his ruin step 
by step. Forgiveness, even of fancied injuries, was unknown at Rome. The 
legates had their orders to enmesh their victim with alternate deceits and sever- 
ities, and there was no more justice than mercy in the measure meted out to 
the disgraced prince. When the invaders met at Lyons, toward the end of June, 
1209, he went out to meet them, gave them his sou as a hostage, and led the 
way to Beziers, where his nephew, with a spirit far more royal than that of Ray- 
mond had prepared to defend his possessions and his people as best he might. 





CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ALBIGENSIAN WARS. 

T was a hopeless fight that lay before the defenders of their 
liberty. They had no leader. The nobles were not united: 
each town looked after itself: the country lay open to the 
invaders. For the next twenty years the history of Provence 
and Tanguedoc offers little but a tedious array of siege, pillage, 
and massacre, broken only by the intrigues of popes, legates, 
kings, and princes, each aiming at selfish gains, and often 
striving by the basest treachery to outwit the other. 

The name by which the Cathari are commonly known in 

modern times comes from the district of Albigeois in Langue- 

t^ doc, where they were very numerous. Its capital, Albi, bore 

no especial part in the struggle, and any of several other titles 

would have fitted them as well as that of Albigenses. 

Beziers, which is near the Mediterranean, was first at- 
tacked. Its viscount, Roger, had gone to Carcassonne ; its 
bishop was with the crusaders, and wished to spare the town. 
He asked that the heretics be given up ; but the chief men said that, rather 
than betray their neighbors, they would hold the place till they were starved. 
-Such was the generous spirit of that region, where Catholic and Protestant had 
grown up together and lived in friendship — an oasis of tolerance in a desert 
of bigotry. In those days, this virtue was punished as a crime. The legate 
Arnold, abbot of Citraux and afterwards archbishop of Narbonne, commanded 
the crusaders. Some one said to him, " All these people are not heretics : what 
shall wo do with the Catholics?" A writer of the time records his ferocious 
answer : " Kill them all. God will know His own." 

The savage order was obeyed to the letter. The siege had not begun, and 
no dispositions had been made on either side, when the walls were suddenly car- 
ried, it is said, by a rush of camp-followers. A frightful carnage followed. The 
city resounded with the shouts and curses of soldiers, the groans of citizens 
falling in a vain effort to defend their homes, the shrieks of women and chil- 
dren. Seven thousand were butchered in a church to which the}' had fled for 
refuge. Of the entire population of the city, variously estimated at from twenty 
to a hundred thousand, not one soul was left alive Fire followed the sword, and 
"by the end of the day nothing remained but smoking ruins. The strangest 

(211) 




THE ATTACK ON BEZIERS. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



213 



ffhing, to our modern minds, is that no particle of blame rested upon the mur- 
derers. The blessing of heaven was supposed to attend their march of ruin • 
and he who had commanded this ruthless havoc lived out his days in honor in 
the land he had made bare. 

The fate of Beziers spread terror through the country. Many strong 
places were deserted, or given up on the first summons. Narbonne allied it- 
self to the crusaders. Chasseneuil was taken, and its people, refusing to recant 




VERNET IN THE EASTERN PYRENEES 



perished at the stake. Carcassonne made a brave resistance, but its water gave 
out, pestilence came, and Viscount Roger was taken prisoner by treachery and 
.soon died. The town was forced to surrender, and the inhabitants were sent 
forth m their underclothing, to take their, chances outside. 



214 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

MONTFORT. 

This ended the first crusade, for the forty days had passed, and the soldiers- 
of the cross, satiated with blood and plunder, went home. But it was necessary- 
to hold the lands that had been taken, and after three nobles had declined the 
difficult trust, it was bestowed upon Simon de Montfort, titular Earl of Leicester. 
Of Norman descent, son of a French father and an English mother, he is to be 
distinguished from his son of the same name, famous in English history. He 
had won much repute for valor, wisdom, and piety; his private life was blame- 
less, and his public character stood high, according to the standards of that age;; 
judged by ours, he was a bitter bigot. When urged to join the crusade, his 
course was decided by the first verse of Scripture his eye lighted on, though he 
could not translate it himself. His actions were chiefly governed by what their 
passed for religious motives ; and if in his later years he took more pains to- 
secure his lands than to suppress heresy, he might well think himself entitled 
to reward for all the troubles and perils he had endured in winning and keeping; 
these lands for the Church and out of the clutch of her enemies. 

His perils now began. He was expected to hold an extensive territory with, 
a small force, while surrounded by those who had abundant reason to hate hinx 
and his cause. If his men straggled on the march or went out to forage, they 
were liable to be cut off by guerillas. His garrison at Carcassonne were alarmed! 
and wished to desert ; nor was it easy to find any one to take command there- 
while he attacked other places. Yet under these huge difficulties he accom- 
plished the impossible, carried his conquests to Albi, eighty miles north, and^ 
was praised by the pope for taking five hundred towns and castles. We may 
hope that the number was exaggerated, for it is not pleasant to think of what- 
befell the inhabitants of so many captured places : in that age man's life and 
woman's honor were of small account beside a point of creed. Nothing in Prot- 
estant legends is likely to exceed what human beings inflicted on each other,, 
through four hundred years, in the name of Jesus. 

Short of men and money alike, the conqueror was unable to hold his con- 
quests, and saw many of them slip from his hands. He called on the pope for 
aid, and it came. The churches, like the temples of old, were largely used as 
banks of deposit, especially in troublous times. Innocent III. now ordered all 
bishops and abbots in that region to confiscate the funds which had been en- 
trusted to their keeping by Albigenses, and hand them over to the persecutor, 
to be used for the destruction of their owners. Such was the faith of the Churchi 
and the honesty of that lamentable age. 

AT MINERVE. 

In the spring of 1410 many recruits arrived, under the pleasant name of 
"Pilgrims:" the pope had released them from the duty of paying interest on 
their debts, however large. Montfort now resumed his active labors. It was- 




THE CRUSADERS ENTER MINERVE SINGING THE TE DEUM. 



215 



216 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

his custom, on taking a town or castle, to kill the garrison and burn the people 
who would not submit to Rome. "Lavaur, Minerve, Casser, Termes," says Mr. 
Lea, " are names which suggest all that man can inflict and man can suffer for 
the glory of God." At one of these places a zealous officer complained against 
the sparing of such as should recant. "You need not fear," said the legate 
Arnold; "there will not be many such." And so it proved. Perrin, the old 
historian of the Albigenses, gives this account of what was done at Minerve: 

"The place was by nature very strong, on the frontier of Spain. It surren- 
dered, for lack of water, to the discretion of the legate ; he ordered the crusaders 
to enter with cross and banner, singing the Te Deum. The abbot of Vaux 
wished to preach to those who were found in the castle, exhorting them to 
acknowledge the pope. But they, not waiting till he had ended his discourse, 
cried out with one accord, ' We will not renounce our faith ; we reject that of the 
Church of Rome. Your labor is to no purpose ; neither life nor death shall 
move us to forsake our religion.' Upon this answer Earl Simon and the legate 
caused a great fire to be kindled, and cast therein a hundred and forty persons 
of both sexes, who approached the flames with alacrity and joy, thanking and 
praising God that He had vouchsafed them the honor to suffer death for His 
name's sake. Thus did those true martyrs of Christ end their frail and perish- 
ing lives in the flames, to live eternally in heaven. Thus did they triumph over 
the pope's legate, opposing him to his face, threatening Earl Simon with the just 
judgment of God, and that he would one day, when the books should be opened, 
pay dearly for the cruelties which he then seemed to exercise with impunity. 
Several of the monks and priests exhorted them to have pity on themselves, 
promising them their lives if they would obey the rule of Rome ; but three women 
only accepted life on condition of abjuring their religion. - ' 

Apart from these official butcheries, many outrages were doubtless com- 
mitted by the "Pilgrims," who had absolution beforehand for all they might 
do — though none was needed ' for slaying or mutilating a heretic. Thus at Bol- 
bonne they blinded certain Catharans, "and cut off their noses and ears till 
there was scarce a trace of the human visage left."* Years after, in a sermon, 
Foulkes of Toulouse spoke of the faithful as sheep and the heretics as wolves. 
A man who lacked eyes, nose, and lips rose in the congregation and interrupted 
the preacher by asking, "Did you ever see a sheep bite a wolf like this?" 
"Well," the ready bishop answered, " Montfort is a good dog, to bite a wolf so 
hard." 

Count Raymond, who ought to have been at the head of his nobles, was 
kept idle for two years by the tricks and false promises of the pope and the 
legate. In 12 11 Montfort, with another force of forty-day crusaders, suddenly 
besieged Toulouse, which had more than once protested its orthodox}-, and had 
even helped to take a neighboring town. When the citizens were required to 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



217 



Tenounce their prince and drive him out, they manfully refused, and made such 
a stout resistance that the besiegers drew off in the night, leaving their wounded 
behind. The cit}^ and the count were now excommunicated — it was not the 
first time — for their "persecution" of the Church's servants. It was the sheep 
hiting the wolf again. 

PEDRO OF ARAGON. 

This siege was Mont fort's only failure. Sometimes with large forces, some- 
times with small, he steadily increased his dominions, and his enemies dared not 
meet him in the field. It was a desultory but most destructive war, aggravated 
■on his side by all the horrors which bigotry could suggest. Raymond in vain 
asked to be tried for his alleged offenses, and his wife's brother, Pedro II. of Aragon, 
who had a claim on some of his possessions, took up his cause. After fruitless 
negotiations at Rome and in Provence, this king, already called "the Catholic,'' 
and a vehement supporter of the Church, entered the field against the Church's 




TOULOUSE. 



armies, and with a thousand cavaliers aided Raymond's troops in the siege of 
Muret, near Toulouse. He was an accomplished prince, a poet, and a mirror of 
chivalry, renowned alike for his magnificence, his prowess, and his gallantries. 
When Montfort started in haste to relieve his garrison, a priest asked him if he 



218 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

did not fear to meet so famous a soldier on such unequal terms. He showed a. 
letter which his scouts had taken from the messenger who bore it. In it 
Pedro declared to a lady of Toulouse that he was coming to drive the French 
from her country for love of her. "Fear him!" cried the crusading general, 
who cared for no woman but his wife, and was as far from sensuality as the 
Cathari: "fear him who comes for a woman's sake to undo the work of God ? 
May God help me as much as I despise him ! " 

On September 13th, 14 13, Montfort, having entered Muret from the rear, 
came forth with about a thousand horsemen to attack twice that number, not 
counting the numerous militia of Toulouse, who were laboring at the siege. 
Raymond, with whom discretion was always the better part of valor, would have 
waited for them in the intrenchments ; but the Spaniard insisted on charging 
in the style of a tournament, leaving the infantry behind. His courage was 
better than his wit, for, according to his son's testimony, he was so exhausted 
from recent dissipation that he could not stand that morning. As they galloped 
on without regard to rank or order, the French attacked them in their squadrons, 
carefully disposed. Two knights made for Pedro, who was soon killed. Ray- 
mond and the others then ran for their lives. The crusaders, after pursuing 
them and slaying many, turned back to the infantry, and made clean work of 
them. With a loss of less than twenty, Montfort' s men slew fifteen or twenty 
times their own number. None escaped but such as managed to cross the 
Garonne, and many were drowned in the attempt. The Catholics credited this 
slaughter to a procession and fast for the cause in Rome, two weeks before. 

RAYMOND DEPOSED. 

After this reverse Raymond submitted entirely to the legate, and went to> 
Kngland. The honesty of Italian priests at this era, and their success in dup- 
ing a victim, are lauded by a writer of the day in terms perhaps more accurate 
than he intended : " O pious fraud ! O fraudulent piety ! " Fraudulent as well 
as truculent piety was more to the taste of the thirteenth century than it is to 
ours ; it mattered not how base a trick might be, how many lies were told, what 
natural feelings of humanity, decency, loyalty, were outraged, so long as an end 
was attained. A council called by .the legate in January, 1215, deposed poor 
Raymond and installed Montfort in his place. The pope confirmed the count's- 
sentence, alleging heresy — which meant no more than its toleration — as the 
cause ; he left the settlement of the lands to a general council, called the twelfth. 
This great assembly met at Rome November 1st. Raymond was there to plead 
his cause, with his son and his tributary counts of Foix and Comminges, who 
had been despoiled like himself; but they sought justice in vain. The council 
assigned to Montfort all his conquests, with the cities of Toulouse and Montauban, 
which he had not conquered. Any remaining lands were to be held by the: 



; ^pmi' 




ATTACK ON TOULOUSE REPULSED. 



2lq 



-22o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Church in trust for the younger Raymond, who was then eighteen, and handed 
over in time if he proved satisfactory. The wishes of the people of those realms, 
and their pathetic and even fanatical attachment to their legitimate sovereign, 
were not considered ; if a prince had no rights that popes and bishops need re- 
. spect, what could be said for the great number of tradesmen and mechanics ? 

This decision might have been supposed to settle the matter ; but it had 
exactly the opposite effect. If the people of Provence and Languedoc had looked 
fof justice in Italy, they were now disenchanted. The avarice and perfidy 
of the chief officials, not to mention their cruelty, were fast bringing the Church 
into contempt. In spite of so many disasters, national feeling was still strong ; 
all that was needed to call it forth was a leader. Nor was the leader wanting now. 

RISTNG OF YOUNG RAYMOND. 

Young Raymond, though but a boy, was more of a man than his father. 
Inheriting his father's pleasing traits, he had won the pity and regard of the 
elderly pope, who at parting had advised him "not to take what was another's, 
but to defend his own." This counsel he accepted for more than it was probably 
intended to be worth. The lands which the council had declared to be his, and 
which had not yet been involved in the war, lay east of the Rhone, and included 
the cities of Marseilles, Aries, Tarascon and Avignon. He now proceeded to 
amend the verdict of the council by putting himself in charge of these. The 
people " rose as one man to welcome their lord, and demanded to be led against 
the Frenchmen, reckless of the. fulminations of the Church, and placing life and 
property at his disposal." 

Meantime another crusade had been harrowing the wretched districts of 
the west, and Montfort had quarreled with Arnold, who wished to be duke as 
well as archbishop of Narbonne. The champion of the Church now found him- 
self excommunicated — a strange contradiction, to which this confused period offers 
many parallels. Religion foiled his efforts to relieve Beaucoise, for the chaplain 
of the besieging army promised full pardon to those who worked on the intrench- 
nients, and many were glad to save their souls so easily. Indulgences and inter- 
dicts, the hopes and terrors which the Church could raise, were now at the com- 
mand of both parties, and equally effectual in the hands of either. 

SIEGE OF TOULOUSE. 

Hearing that Toulouse was treating with its former master, the earl attacked 
it, and after some fighting in the streets exacted a large sum as the price of its 
. safety, disarmed the people, and destroyed the walls. But these precautions were 
in vain. Barly in 121 7 he had crossed the Rhoue to attack young Raymond, 
when news reached him that the elder count, with troops from Spain, had been 
welcomed in his old capital, and that the nobles whom he had so often defeated 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



22r 



were gathering to support their deposed sovereign. In September he beleaguered 
the town, which he may have expected to fall an easy prey. But the spirit of 
the citizens had risen, as once before in extreme danger. They had the fate of 
Beziers in fresh remembrance, and knew that the inhuman order to kill all and 
spare none might be repeated in their case. Women as well as men worked by 




day and night to renew the fortifications, and the vehement remonstrances of the 
new pope had no effect. 

Perrin has a rather full account of this, which is here condensed. Accord- 
ing to him, Raymond would have been in straits if Montfort had come at once :. 
the delay saved him and the city. He appointed a provost to have charge of the 




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THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 223 

■defenses, keep the ditches clear, repair breaches in the walls, and assign every 
man his post. Those who desired vengeance for injuries done by Montfort, and 
they were numerous, came from all parts to help the count. The general's 
brother, Guy, led an attack, but was put to flight. The forty-day men, having 
had enough for that season, went home. 

THE CRUSADERS MEET DISASTERS. 

Montfort, after his arrival, was discouraged by furious sallies of the besieged. 
At a council, the legate Bertrand strove to hearten him with promises that the 
town would soon be taken and its inhabitants all killed, while any of the crusa- 
ders who fell should go direct to paradise. But one of the chief officers said, 
u You talk with great assurance, Lord Cardinal. If it be so, the war will not 
much benefit the general. For you and the rest of the prelates and clergy have 
stirred up all this strife, and would fain make more trouble." The legate took 
no notice of this affront, which it was not then convenient to resent ; and they 
determined not to assault the city, but to blockade it 011 the west side, which 
looks upon the Garonne. As part of the army was moving toward the river, 
they were attacked from within the walls. The count of Foix, coming up with 
reinforcements, drove the enemy to the water, so that they sprang pell-mell into 
their boats, and many were drowned : Montfort himself had a narrow escape. 

Raymond called an assembly, invited the people to thank God for this 
beginning of victory, and exhorted all to help prepare the engines to play against 
the castle outside the walls, which had been yielded to Montfort years before. 
They speedily got ready slings, crossbows, mangonels, and other devices for 
sending forth stones and arrows ; these they directed against the castle, to the 
great dismay of those within it. Bishop Foulkes of Toulouse, who loved to 
oppress his flock, assured the general that the legate had sent letters and 
messengers throughout the world, and that succors would soon come in such 
force that he might do whatever he wished. On this the same cavalier who 
had berated the cardinal turned on the bishop and treated him to a yet more 
vigorous scolding. 

Cold w r eather coming on, the besiegers went into winter-quarters ; but Ray- 
mond raised a rampart about the city, and sent his sou to beat up recruits. Both 
sides awaited the arrival of a new army of the cross, which came in the spring of 
12 18 to the number of one hundred thousand. Montfort and the legate, "being 
resolved to make them earn their pardons," ordered an assault for the next day. 
The people of Toulouse, not waiting for this, sallied out in the night, surprised 
the camp, which was in disorder and poorly guarded, and covered the ground 
with corpses. Weary of slaughter, they returned in safety to thank God for 
His gracious help. 

Two of the newly arrived lords, not pleased with this reception, urged the 
.general to make peace. The indignant legate rebuked them, saying that the 




ANCIENT WAR MACHINERY. 



-224 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 225 

Church needed no help from men who favored heretics. Then a noble, one of 
those who loved to repress the insolence of the clergy, replied, "Sir Cardinal r 
why should you rob Count Raymond and his son of what belonged to them ? 
If I had known as much of these matters as I know now, I would have stayed 
at home. 1 ' 

The old chroniclers whom Perrin followed were evidently full of national 
feeling, and recorded everything that made for the credit of their side and the 
discredit of the enem} r . If they have not improved the facts, Raymond showed 
far more spirit and ability during this nine months' siege than in his previous 
career, and Montfort vastly less. The general was sick at heart, and the legate 
blamed him for his want of success, ascribing it to indifference or inca- 
pacity. The hatred which the whole country, or what he had left of it, felt 
toward the earl, now caused a lack of supplies, so that "the camp was near 
starving, while the cit}^ felt no such w 7 ant." But the end of this contest, and of 
all earthly things for the persecutor, was at hand. 

DEATH OF MONTFORT. 

Early on the morning of June 23d, 121 8, Raymond's troops made a sally, utter- 
ing the war-cries of their several cities, and drove the foe before them. A messen- 
ger ran to the earl, who was at mass ; he said he would come when the service was 
over. Others followed, crying that they were undone, since the army was with- 
out a head ; but he answered that he would not stir, though he were slain on the 
spot, "till he had seen his Creator" — meaning the consecrated bread, raised on 
high by the officiating priest. But the chaplain, more prudent than his master, 
hurried the mass to an end, " clipping and curtailing it, for fear his ears should 
be clipped." After the earl had mounted, his horse was wounded by an arrow. 
Being in pain, the beast would not be controlled, and bore his rider too near the 
ramparts. There he was shot with a crossbow in the thigh, so that he lost much 
blood. He called for his brother, and wished to be taken to the rear. While they 
were talking, a stone from a mangonel, said to have been worked by a woman, 
struck him on the head and severed it from his body. On this the crusaders 
withdrew, their forty days having expired. During the confusion of their de- 
parture, Raymond made another sally and a great slaughter. The remains of 
the army soon abandoned the castle and fled to Carcassonne. 

Montfort's end was differently estimated by the two parties. The Catho- 
lics called him a martyr, the bulwark of the faith, and even the new Maccabee. 
The latter title was most inappropriate, for Judas Maccabeus, as we have seen, 
w r as the defender of liberty and of his country. However sincere the motive in 
either case, there is a vast difference between him who stands for his altars 
and his fires, and those who go into other men's lands to meddle, to rob, and to 
repress by violence a faith which by right concerns only those who hold it. 



226 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. . 

Montfort's work now went to pieces, for his son and heir, Aylmer, or Amanri, 
had little of his ability. The counts of Foix and Comminges recovered most of 
the lands that had been wrested from them. Foix was returning from Lauragues 
with prisoners and spoil when he was pursued by French troops, who claimed to 
fight "for Heaven and the Church." Young Raymond came to his aid and 
shouted : "We fight against thieves who use the Church for a cloak. They have 
stolen enough ; let us make them vomit it up, and pay off old scores." They 
charged, and cut the foe to pieces. Captain Segun, " an eminent robber," was 
taken and hanged on a tree. Aylmer besieged Marmande, with little success at 
first, for the defenders were brave, and the ditches filled up with corpses. Prince 
Louis of France came in 121 9 with thirty earls and a great force. The town, 
which had but five thousand inhabitants, surrendered on his promise that all 
lives should be spared. This displeased Aylmer, who called the prelates together 
and said that these people had killed his father, and he wanted blood for blood. 
The bishops, after their manner, agreed that heretics and rebels were unworthy 
to live. Aylmer brought his troops within the walls, and charged them to kill 
all. It was done ; men, women, and children perished in an indiscriminate slaugh- 
ter like that of Beziers. Louis was offended, but not beyond forgiveness, as we 
shall see. On his way home he summoned Toulouse to surrender, but it declined. 

During the next few years Aylmer, the pope, and a new legate called in 
vain for more crusaders, while the national party gathered strength. Protestant- 
ism raised its head again ; its fugitives came out of their hiding-places, its mis- 
sionaries resumed their old activity, and its bishops defied those of the Church. 
Yet when the elder Raymond died at Toulouse, in August, 1222, his body was 
denied burial. Though no heretic, he had not been diligent enough in 
repressing heresy, and such crimes the Church never forgave. His son, a 
quarter of a century later, presented to the pope abundant evidence of the dead 
man's religious character, but in vain. His bones long lay above ground, "the 
sport of rats," in the building of the Hospitallers, whom he had endowed ; and 
his skull was preserved for near five hundred years. 

CRUSADE OF LOUIS VIII. 

Aylmer, unable to maintain his position, made repeated offers of all his 
claims to Philip Augustus of France. That king died in 1223, and was succeeded 
by his son, Louis VIII., who in February, 1224, accepted the cession. He pre- 
pared a new crusade, and only disagreement over the terms supposed to be agreed 
on with the pope, who tried one of the usual tricks, saved the count from prob- 
able destruction. Unable to cope with the power of France, Raymond VII. met 
the bishops at Montpellier on June 2d, 1224, and promised to support the Church, 
punish Protestants, and do whatever else was asked of him. But this was not 
enough ; he had been a rebel and was not to be trusted. The pope wrote to 




DEATH OF MONTFORT AT SIEGE OF TOULOUSE- 



227 



228 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Louis that Lauguedoc was "a land of iron and brass, from which the rust 
could be removed by fire only." The customary shuffling, juggling, and over- 
reaching went on, to the disgust of sundry delegates at the council of Bourges, 
who openly protested against the greed of the papal court. 

In 1226 the king put his crusade in motion, having forced his own terms on 
the pope. Like most monarchs, he was generally on his guard with the clergy- 
He was to stay as long as he saw fit, with his nobles and men-at-arms, thus 
securing far more continuous and efficient work than had been possible on the 
forty days' plan. He was to receive a tenth of all Church funds for his ex- 
penses ; the abbots and other dignitaries protested against this, but he would 
accept no less. The crusade was thus much less popular with the clergy than 
among the laity. "The legate was busy dismissing the boys, women, old men, 
paupers, and cripples, who had assumed the cross. These he forced to swear 
as to the amount of money they possessed ; of this he took the greater part, and 
let them go after granting them absolution from the vow — an indirect way 
of selling indulgences which became habitual and produced large sums. 
Louis drove a thriving trade of the same kind with a higher class of crusaders, 
by accepting heavy payments from those who owed him service and were not 
ambitious of the glory or the perils of the expedition." 

The army, said to comprise no less than fifty thousand cavalry and infantry 
in proportion, gathered at Bourges in May, 1226. This formidable array filled 
the land with terror, and most of the cities, including Albi, sent to notify Louis 
of their submission. But Aviguon, which was among the number, plucked up 
a spirit at the last moment, closed its gates, and refused to admit the king, say- 
ing that he could pass around it. It contained many Waldenses, who feared to 
trust themselves in the power of the crusaders. The army besieged it through 
the whole summer, and suffered much from insufficient food and succeeding 
pestilence ; for Raymond was active, wasting the adjoining lands and attacking 
any who set forth for forage. If Avignon could have held out a little longer, it 
would have saved its walls and the ransom which was exacted on its surrender. 
It also agreed, of course, to suppress heresy, and received a bishop who was likely 
to carry out this provision. Within a week after this a freshet occurred, and the 
site of the royal camp was under water. 

Passing to the west, Louis began the siege of Toulouse, but soon abandoned 
it, and died on the way home, in November. All that had been accomplished 
by these vast preparations was the leaving of various garrisons, and a royal gov- 
ernor, De Beaujeau, who in 1227 took a castle, put the garrison to the sword, and 
burned a deacon and some other Christians. 

SUBMISSION OF RAYMOND VU. 

After two years more of desultory warfare, the spirit of Raymond, or his 
power of resistance, was exhausted. He went to Paris, made peace with young 




*&-&-"' 




SIEGE OK AVIGNON. 



229 



230 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Louis IX., and his mother the regent, did public penance, and was formally 
reconciled to the Church. As the old historian of Languedue remarks, " It was a 
lamentable sight to see so brave a man, who had stood out so long against so many 
come barefooted and half-dressed to the altar, in presence of two cardinals, one 
the legate to France, the other to England. But this was not all the ignomini- 
ous penance inflicted on him ; for there were many articles and conditions in 
that treaty, any one of which should have been sufficient for his ransom if the 
king of France had taken him fighting in the field against him." 

It is needless to detail the eighteen articles of this treaty, which are given 
in full by Perrin. One of them required him to spend five years at Rhodes or 
]n the Holy Land, and "to fight against the Turks and Saracens ;" this he never 
fulfilled. But he was confined in Paris for some time, and obliged to sign a de- 
cree against the persons and estates of Protestants. They were to be sought 
out by the Inquisition, their lives taken, their goods confiscated, their houses 
demolished. As Mr. Lea observes, "It was a war between the two opposing 
principles of persecution and tolerance, and persecution was victorious." 

A marriage was patched up between Raymond's daughter and a brother of 
Louis IX., two children of eight }^ears old. After securities had been taken, the 
count was granted a life-interest in some of his former territories. The cities 
and castles were dismantled, and he was to maintain peace on the Church's terms. 
Amnesty was proclaimed to all but heretics, and his old comrades, who had with- 
stood Montfort, the legate, and the pope, might hope to escape beggary by becom- 
ing persecutors. 

THE COUNT OF FOIX. 

This turn of affairs was far from pleasing to the Albigenses ; but all that 
remained for them was the choice between hiding-places, apostacy, and martyr- 
dom. The count of Foix, an old and childless hero, was minded to resist to the 
last, and met Raymond's persuasions by saying that he could not renounce his 
party or his faith, but would face the next crusade and leave the event to God. 
He yielded at last to the entreaties of his subjects, who feared to be exterminated 
and longed for peace. The noble and pathetic spee'ch in which he announced 
to the legate his reluctant submission is as far as possible from a recantation, or 
from the self-abasement of his late feudal superiors, at whom he glanced with 
manly scorn : 

"I have long since bid adieu to rhetoric, being used to plead my cause by 
the point of sword and spear. My cousin the Count of Toulouse has earned my 
thanks by procuring from our enemies a hearing, which they would never grant 
till now ; and he desires us to desist from opposing and making head against 
those who would do us mischief, assuring us that the king of France will gov- 
ern according to justice. It was ever my desire to maintain and preserve my 
liberty. Our country owes homage to the Count of Toulouse for making it an 




MASSACRE OF THF VANDOIS. 



231 



232 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

earldom, but it owns no other master than myself. As to the pope, I have never 
offended him, for, as a prince, he has demanded nothing of me in which I have 
not obeyed him." (Roger's ideas were evidently not clear on this topic.) "He 
has no call to meddle with my religion, since in that every one ought to be free 
and to use his own pleasure. My father did always recommend to me this liberty, 
so that, continuing in this state and posture, I might be able to look up with 
confidence when the heavens were dissolved, fearing nothing. This alone it is 
that troubles me. ... It is not fear that makes me stoop to your desires, and con- 
strains me to humble my will so far as coward-like to truckle to your purpose ; 
but being moved by benign and generous dread of the miser}^ of my subjects 
and the ruin of my country, and wishing not to be counted factious, opinionated, 
and the firebrand and incendiary of France, it is thus I yield in this extremity. 
Otherwise I would have stood as a wall, and proof against all assaults of ene- 
mies. I therefore give you a pledge of friendship, for the sake of general peace. 
Take my castles, till such time as I have made the submission you require." 

In 1240 Trancavei, a natural son of Roger of Beziers, headed a rising 
against oppression, besieged Carcassonne, and took one of its suburbs. Anxious 
to avenge his father, who was thought to have been poisoned there by his cap- 
tors in 12C9, he slew thirty priests who had been promised their lives. In 1242 
a band of eleven inquisitors, going cheerfully about the country on their bloody 
errand, were set upon and murdered at Avignonet. The Catharan stronghold of 
Montsiguo, perched on a cliff among the mountains, held out till 1244, when 
the difficult approaches to it were betrayed by shepherds, and the outworks 
taken in the night. A huge funeral pile was built, and two hundred and five of 
the "Perfect," both men and women, refusing to recant, were thrown into the 
flames. Raymond, who had been forced into the position of a persecutor, be- 
came such sincerely in his last years: in 1249 ne ordered eighty persons, who 
had acknowledged their belief, to be burned. Shortly after this he died, and 
was succeeded by his son-in-law, the French Alphonse, who was entirely accept- 
able at Rome, and needed no urging to punish heretics. Among his first ex- 
penses were a large grant to support the Inquisition and purchase wood for its 
burnings. Protestantism had now more than ever to hide its head. Some of its 
votaries fled to Lombardy, some recanted, and many perished. For a hundred 
years the Inquisition had its way, completing the evil work which the crusaders 
had begun. As always and everywhere, the result of its efforts was to crush in- 
telligence, to corrupt and weaken the national character, to impoverish and ruin 
the country. Yet some embers of the old free faith lurked amid the ashes, and 
in the sixteenth century the Reformation was eagerly received through all that 
war-harried and blood-soaked region. 



CHAPTER XV, 



WICLIF AXD THE LOLLARDS. 



GLAND, surrounded by the seas, escaped some 
of the evils which afflicted the continent ; for 
instance, the Inquisition never found a 
lodgment there. Its people were marked 
by a sturdy spirit and a love of libert}', 
which often showed themselves in con- 
tempt for the corrupt lives of the clergy 
and opposition to the greedy exactions of 
Rome. In the fourteenth century a great 
man arose to give voice to these feelings, 
and reasons why they should go further 
than they did. If Wiclif's immediate results 
were small, if his fame is still less than it 
ought to be, it is because he was born too 
Jle was a reformer in an age that sorely needed 
reforms but was not ready for them, a Protestant when 
protests were little understood, a Puritan two hundred 
years before Puritanism took a name and became a 
recognized power in the world. 
"Orthography was optional" in those days, and Wiclif's name has been spelt 
in as mam' different ways as that of Shakespeare. It is not the lettering of 
his name, but his opinions, his writings, and their influence, that made an era 
in religious history. His spirit was mainly practical and political, for which 
reason some severe theologians, as Mr. Milner, have found in him "not much 
that deserves the peculiar attention of godly persons," and "could not con- 
scientiously join with the popular cry in ranking him among the highest 
worthies of the Church." He retained a few notions now generally discarded, 
such as a partial belief in purgatory, so that rigid Protestants find him not 
quite up to their standard. He thought little — perhaps too little — of some 
points of order and discipline still retained by many, and therefore he does 
not satisfy thoroughgoing churchmen. But if we allow for the fact that he 
died a hundred years before Luther was born, we shall find it remarkable 
enough that he anticipated in most matters not only the opinions of the men 
who changed the religion of half Europe, but those which prevail to-day. 

(233) 




234 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



John Wiclif was born in Yorkshire about 1324, and became famous at the 
University of Oxford for learning, and for qualities then somewhat less highly- 
esteemed, eloquence and courage. His first book, "The Last Age of the 
Church," appeared in 1356, and attacked the covetousness of the papal court. 
Nine years later, when Urban V. demanded the arrears of a large tribute which 
King John had promised to the pope in 1213, but which had not been paid 
in a long time, Edward III. referred the question to Parliament, and it was 
much disputed, many of the clergy taking the pope's side : Wiclif now dis- 
tinguished himself by maintaining that no monarch could pledge the revenues 
of England without consent of Parliament. He fully shared the general dis- 
gust felt toward the begging friars. He disapproved the wealth and temporal 

power gained by the Church, and held 
that priests should be allowed to marry 
like other men. The universal practice 
of confessing to them he deemed unne- 
cessary. Growing bolder as his thoughts 
traveled further, he rejected the pope's 
supremacy as the source of all the 
Church's evils, and the 
•>;••; cause of mixing up carnal 
' h and spiritual things in 
\ hopeless confusion. He re- 
§ garded excommunications 
. ■ ; and interdicts as mere im- 
- \ f-'i pertinent abuses — not 
W powers liable to be abused, 
I '' ; - but usurpations and wrongs 
in idea and in fact. As for 
\ N pardons and indulgences, he 
called them "a subtle mer- 
• chandise of antichristian 
clerks, whereby they magnified their own fictitious power, and, instead of caus- 
ing men to dread sin, encouraged them to wallow therein like pigs." In short, 
he denied the claims and despised the practices which Protestants reject to-day, 
but which prevailed in his time and long after. Scripture was in his view 
the only exponent of divine truth, and reason its only interpreter. 

These principles he diligently taught in his writings, in his preaching at 
Oxford, Lutterworth, and London, and through missionaries or "poor priests," 
whom he sent out to preach the gospel, in its apostolic simplicity and purity, 
throughout England. In his later years he translated the New Testament and 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 235 

most books of the Old : this version was completed bj r a friend, and published 
not long after his death. 

These bold efforts at reform made him a marked man, whose downfall 
would be welcome to many ; and his denial of transubstantiation could not but 
offend most. In any other country his life would probably have been sacrificed. 
Indeed, it is still a marvel that he escaped a violent death ; but England, as we 
have seen, was then unused to trials for heresy, and he had a powerful pro- 
tector in u old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster." This famous duke 
stood by him when, by the pope's order, he appeared before the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and the Bishop of London, in 1377, to answer to certain" charges. 
The next year, when he was dangerously ill at Oxford, a committee of the 
notorious begging monks, or mendicants, entered his room and asked him to 
purge his conscience by taking back his slanders upon their order before he 
died: on this he raised himself in bed, and with blazing eyes cried out, "I 
shall not die, but live, and declare the evil deeds of the friars ! " 

Other charges were brought against him, and referred by the bishops to 
the university, which took no action of importance ; but in 1382 the storm raised 
by his opinions about the mass caused his banishment from Oxford. In 1384 
he was summoned to Rome ; but he did not go, and died peacefully in his bed 
on the last day of that year. The Council of Constance, while it was consider- 
ing the case of his disciple Huss, in 14 15, took an impotent revenge on Wiclif 
by ordering his bones to be dug up and burned, and this sentence was carried 
out in 1428. His ashes were cast into a stream called the Swift, which flows 
into the river Avon. Thence, as Luther said, they passed into the Severn, and 
from the Severn to the ocean ; and so his doctrine was to be spread abroad 
through all lands. 

SPREAD OF LOLLARDRY. 

Wiclif s teachings took strong hold at Oxford and throughout England; it 
was claimed that every other man you met was a Lollard, as his followers were 
called. " Women as well as men became the preachers of the new sect. Lol- 
lardry had its own schools, its own books ; its pamphlets were passed everywhere 
from hand to hand. 1 ' The clergy were freely satirized, and a petition sent to 
Parliament in 1395, reflecting severely on the corruptions of the Church, and 
claiming that its income, beyond what was necessary for working jDurposes, 
would enable the king to endow a hundred hospitals, and to support fifteen 
hundred knights and six thousand squires. This close estimate was adopted 
by a Parliament of the next reign, though the proposed confiscation was not 
carried out till that of Henry VIII. 

The first attempts at persecution only raised the spirit of the Lollards, for 
their cause was more popular than that of their opponents. " Few sheriffs 
would arrest on the mere warrant of an ecclesiastical officer, and no royal court 




236 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 237 

would issue the writ 'for the burning of a heretic' on a bishop's requisi- 
tion." They grew yet bolder with this impunity, and "delighted in outraging 
the religious feeling of their day. One Lollard gentleman took home the 
sacramental wafer, and lunched on it with wine and oysters. Another flung 
some images of the saints into his cellar. The preachers stirred up riots 
by the violence of their sermons against the friars." The new sect had 
its own way for a time in London, and was strong at Lincoln, Salisbury, and 
Worcester. 

When Henry IV. came to the throne in 1399, he found it expedient to 
secure the support of the clergy by putting down their enemies. This king 
was the son of John of Gaunt, Wiclif's old protector ; but Archbishop Arundel 
made it plain to him, that "to make his throne secure, he must conciliate the 
Church and sacrifice the Lollards." The first victim was William Sautre or 
Sawtrey, a preacher of London. On February 12th, 1401, he was accused by 
Arundel of having once renounced his errors and afterwards returned to them. 
The eight charges against him contain chiefly these dangerous doctrines : that 
he would not worship the cross, but only Christ who suffered on it ; that a vow 
to go on pilgrimage was not binding, but the expenses of the intended journey 
might be given to the poor: "that every priest and deacon is more bound to 
preach the word of God than to say the canonical hours ;" and that the conse- 
crated bread does not cease to be bread. Confessing these crimes, especially the 
last named, and refusing to change his opinion, he was handed over to the king 
and by him to the sheriffs, with command that he "be put into the fire and there 
really burned, to the great horror of his offense aud the manifest example of 
other Christians." The sentence was carried out soon after; and this was the 
first fire kindled in England for a Protestant. 

The next martyr, so far as we are informed, was John Badby, a plain lay- 
man. In March, 1409, he was condemned, like Sautre, for accepting the evi- 
dence of his senses about the bread. They led him to Smithfield, a suburb 
famous long after as the scene of similar atrocities, put him in an empty barrel, 
chained him to a stake, and piled dry wood about him. The king's eldest son, 
who chanced to be present, urged him to renounce his errors and save his life ; 
but he would not. When he felt the flames, he called on God for mercy : the 
prince, misunderstanding him, ordered the fire to be put out, and promised him 
a pension if he would recant. Rejecting this, he was again put in the barrel, 
and the torch again applied. He was a long time dying, but bore his torments 
with great fortitude. 

William Thorpe, a preacher of the new doctrines, has left a long account of 
his examination by the archbishop, which occurred in 1407 ; but there is no 
record of his execution. Probably he died in prison. 



238 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

LORD COBHAM. 

The most famous of all these victims was Sir John Oldcastle, who by mar- 
riage became Lord Cobham. A man of war and of affairs, he stood high in the 
favor of king and prince, though known as the captain of the Lollards. Their 
preachers were openly entertained at his houses in London and in Wales ; his 
main seat, Cowling Castle, near Rochester in Kent, was their continual resort ; 
and he was the firmest adherent of their doctrines. When the House of Com- 
mons in 1404 and 1410 urged the king to meet his needs by confiscating the 
abbey lands, Cobham was probably their moving spirit, for the clergy charged 
him with "arming the hands of laymen for the spoil of the Church." His char- 
acter was above reproach ; his enemies owned that his heresies were concealed 




WICLIF'S CHURCH. 



''under a veil of holiness." Iu 1413 the Convocation accused him as "the prin- 
cipal receiver, favorer, protector, and defender" of the sect, and alleged that he 
had sent out their missionaries and attacked or threatened their opponents. 
The bishops demanded his trial : Henry V., who had come to the throne in this 
year, was the same prince who had cast Badby back into the flames, but in his 
friend's case he asked for delay, and promised to undertake his conversion in 
person. Cobham was not to be convinced, and in September he was arrested 
and confined in the Tower of London. The language he used concerning the 
pope was indeed so violent as might easily offend the king beyond forgiveness : 
Foxe says that, hearing it, Henry "would talk no longer with him, but gave 
him up to the malice of his enemies." 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 239 

At his first examination, he handed in a paper wherein the sacrament of 
the altar, penances, images, and pilgrimages were moderately and prudently 
treated of. On this he wished to rest his case, though the archbishop told him 
other points should be inquired into. A few days later his opinion was asked as 
to four articles which had been sent to him in prison. He was again offered 
absolution if he would submit: instead of doing this, he knelt, raised his hands 
and eyes, and confessed the sins of his youth. Then rising and turning to the 
audience, he exclaimed in a loud voice, "See, good people ; these men never yet 
cursed me for breaking God's commandments, but for their own laws and tradi- 
tions they handle me and others most cruelly^ And therefore both they and 
their laws, according to God's promise, shall be utterly destroyed." 

This unpromising beginning produced some confusion in the court. Order 
being restored, a long discussion ensued, in which the prisoner showed a good 
degree of knowledge and acuteness. Having declared that he believed all the 
laws of God, all the contents of the Bible, and all that the Lord wished him to 
believe, he was asked whether any material bread remained after the words of 
consecration were pronounced. " The Scriptures," he replied, " make no mention 
of material bread. In the sacrament there are both Christ's body and the 
bread : the bread is the thing we see with our eyes, but Christ's body is hid, 
and to be seen only by faith." On this they all cried out, "It is heresy." 
Said Cobham, " St. Paul was as wise as you, I am sure, and he called it bread in 
his epistle to the Corinthians. 'The bread that we break,' said he, 'is it not 
the partaking of the body of Christ ? ' Lo, he calls it bread, and not Christ's 
body, but a means whereby we receive His body." 

Being asked whether he would worship the cross on which the Lord died, 
he inquired where it was. "Suppose it to be here," the friar answered. "This 
is a wise man," said Cobham, "to ask me such a question, when he knows not 
where the thing is. But how should I worship it ? " "Give it such worship," 
one of them answered, "as St Paul speaks of, 'God forbid that I should glory 
save in the cross'" — a lame and stupid explanation, which Cobham thought fit to 
brush aside with contempt. Spreading his arms wide, he said, " This is a cross, 
and better than your cross of wood, for God made this, and man the other ; yet 
I will not seek to have it worshipped." "Sir," said the Bishop of London, 
"you know that Christ died on a material cross." "Yes," he replied, "and I 
know also that our salvation came not by the material cross, but by Him who 
died thereon. And I know too that St. Paul rejoiced not in the cross itself, but 
in Christ's sufferings and death, and suffered himself for the same truth." 

This was enough ; anxious to prove that " the letter kills," the prelates 
condemned Lord Cobham as a heretic, and sent him back to the Tower. But 
as " a man of integrity, dearly beloved by the king," his execution was delayed, 
and one night in November he found means to escape. While in hiding he sent 




240 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



241 



messages to his brethren : secret meetings were held, and a revolt on a large 
scale organized. Few will blame the Lollards for conspiring to defend their 
faith ; but rebellion against the lawful king, especially on merely religious 
grounds, was seldom successful in England. The rising was put down in St. 
Giles' Fields, January 6th, 14 14. This broke the power of Lollardry, and 




CROUCH OAK ADDLESTONE, UNDER WHICH WICLIF PREACHED. 



henceforth trials and executions were frequent. Near forty, including Sir 
Roger Acton, a knight, and Beverley, a preacher, were promptly hanged or 
burned near the spot where they were taken in arms. Had they entered 
London and effected a junction with their friends there, the result might have 



242 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



been different ; but the leaders were taken one by one, and all further attempt 
at resistance prevented. 

Cobham bad again escaped, and lived as an outlaw for near four years 
longer. In December, 141 7, be was caugbt on tbe Welsb border, sent to London 
by Lord Powis, dragged on a hurdle, "with insult and barbarity," to St. Giles' 
Fields, and there hung in chains over a slow fire. 

In 1424 William White, a godly man and eminent preacher, was burned at 
Norwich, and with him or soon after, two others, Abraham of Colchester and 
John Waddon. Many others suffered ; and Lollardry survived only " in scattered 
and secret groups, whose sole bond was a common loyalty to the Bible and a 
common spirit of revolt against the religion of their day." They were still 
objects of persecution in the middle of the fifteenth century ; but the cause of 
free conscience and public reform was practically lost, and the good work had to 
be all done over again a hundred years later. 




\±P 






k^ 



•C#fe^ 








CHAPTER XVI. 



BOHEMIA AND JOHN HUSS. 

HE doctrines of Wiclif spread less widely, and had 
far less visible effect, in England than in another 
and distant land, where the soil was better pre- 
pared to receive them. 

Bohemia, which is now the northwestern province of 
the Austrian empire, is almost in the middle of the map 
of Europe ; military writers have called it the key of that 
continent, and many important battles have been fought 
within its borders. Its natives, though surrounded by 
Germans, are not of German stock, but Czechs, a branch 
of the great Slavonic race ; their ancestors came from the 
east in the fifth century of our era. When they received 
Christianity, which was not till four or five hundred years 
later, it was not from Rome, but from the Greek Church. 
Two missionaries, Methodius and Cyril, were sent from 
Constantinople in the year 862, and labored with success 
in Moravia, which adjoins Bohemia on the east and was 
settled by the same tribe. They preached and held ser- 
vices in the tongue of the people — whereas Latin was 
always and everywhere the language of the Roman Church : 
they also translated the Scriptures into Czech. In 871 
IBorzivoy, duke of Bohemia, visited Moravia, listened to the new teachings, and 
was baptized with his wife Ludmilla. Within the next hundred years the 
country was gradually Christianized. 

The people of that region were therefore trained in the usages of the East- 
ern Church, which in three important points differed from those of the Western. 
Their prayer-books and services were in their own language ; their priests were 
.allowed to marry ; and they received the communion in both kinds, bread and 
wine — whereas Rome denied the cup to the laity. The last difference was the 
-one on which both sides laid such stress as to cause a fierce persecution and a 
bloody war in the fifteenth century. 

The popes, never content to permit any departure from the uniformity of 
their ritual and discipline, made various efforts to suppress these irregularities. 

(243) 



244 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Gregory VII. declared in 1079 that it was "the pleasure of Almighty God 
that divine worship should be held in a private [or dead or unknown] language, 
though all do not understand it." And he gave this curious reason : " for if the 
singing were general and loud, the service might easily fall into contempt.'* 
The ideas which govern public religious services in our day are the exact opposite 
of this. Congregational singing, which is now desired and cultivated almost 
everywhere, was then a thing to be dreaded and avoided. But it was the usual 1 
policy of Rome to let the clergy do all, and keep the people mere spectators. 




CHAMBER IN LOLLARD'S TOWER, LAMBETH PLACE, WHERE THE REFORMERS WERE CONFINED. 

So much for the language of worship. As to the domestic lives of priests,. 
Celestin III., in 1 197, sent a legate to Prague to insist on their celibacy. But the: 
people listened to him with great indignation, and took no trouble to obey, pre- 
ferring that their ministers should have each his own family ties and comforts, 
and not be tempted to meddle with theirs. As to the cup in the communion, its 
use was forbidden in 1353 ; but the Bohemians would not yield. In this matter 
the reformers introduced no novelty, but simply defended the ancient custom of 
the land, which they justly claimed to be also that of the primitive Church. 

Of these reformers Huss was not the first. Conrad Stickna, after a visit to- 
Rome, spoke freely against the corruptions of the Church and the vices of the 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 245 

monks. Militz, his colleague in the cathedral at Prague, preached righteousness 
in three languages and several times a day. Janow, confessor to the emperor 
Charles IV., moved many by his writings, and sought to procure a general coun- 
cil for purposes of reform. All these were sent into exile ; their deaths occurred 
in 1369, 1374, and 1394. 

At this time Prague, the capital city, was also capital of the empire, and 
eminent as a seat of learning. Charles IV., the king of Bohemia, was German 
•emperor from 1346 to 1378, and in 1348 founded the University of Prague, which 
for fifty years was the only institution of the kind in Germany. Here Huss 
and Jerome received their training, and here they taught. The authorities 
were mainly on the pope's side, and in its governing board Bohemia had but one 
vote against three from neighboring papal countries, Bavaria, Saxony, and Po- 
land ; but books and lectures breed free thought, and the close connection between 
the two great universities, Prague and Oxford, helped to open a way by which 
Wiclif 's doctrine might enter. 

As early as the twelfth century, Peter Waldo, from whom the Waldenses 
were named, fleeing from persecution in France, sought refuge with some of his 
followers in Bohemia. The darkness of those ages leaves us little knowledge 
of the spread of their doctrines in their new home ; but they must have done 
something to confirm and extend the liberty-loving spirit which afterwards went 
so far to anticipate the Protestant Reformation. 

Another foreign influence began with the marriage, in 1382, of Anne of 
Bohemia, the emperor's daughter, to Richard II. of England. She took with 
her a copy of the gospels in Bohemian, German, and Latin — an example to 
which Wiclif referred in defense of his English translation of the Bible. From 
this time communication between the two countries became more frequent. 
The queen's attendants, returning to their native land after her death in 1394? 
perhaps carried with them some of Wiclif s writings. Others were brought in 
by students going from one university to another. Two from Oxford produced 
at Prague a forged document — for the age of pious frauds was not over — pretend- 
ing to be a formal approval of Wiclif 's doctrines by the University of Oxford, 
sealed with its great seal. A few years later the pope thought it necessary to 
write to the Archbishop of Prague, denouncing the " arch- heretic " Wiclif and 
the " cancer " of his teachings, and ordering that his works be taken by force 
from any who had them, and such persons — priests, professors, or whoever they 
might be — be cast into prison. 

These doctrines, which for the time were extremely radical and sweeping, 
by no means gained at once the entire approval of the Bohemian liberals. Even 
Huss was at first scandalized by some of them, and to the last did not adopt 
them all. In May, 1403, a Convocation of the University of Prague met 
to examine forty-five articles, said to be drawn from Wiclif s writings. The 







246 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



247 






Germans wished to condemn them, and carried their point. The Bohemians 
defended them in part only, but said that others did not fairly represent the 
Englishman's views. • Five years later these proceedings were repeated, and both 
parties appealed to King Wenzel or Wenceslaus, who decided in favor of his own 
countrymen. This brought matters to a crisis. The Germans would have no 
more to do with Prague, and founded new schools at Leipsic and Erfurt. John 
Huss now came more than ever to the front. 

This famous reformer and martyr was born July 6th, 1373, amd took his 
second name, 
after the fash- 
ion of the 
time, from his 
native village 
of Hussinecz. 
His parents 
were poor but 
respectable 
people, and his 
main desire 
was to get an 
education. He 
managed to 
enter the Uni- 
versity at 
sixteen, and 
made his way 
through it, as 
many grea t 
men have 
done since in 

many lands, by means of his own labor and the 
charity of others. His abilities were solid, 
his application steady, and his life so blame- 
less that his enemies could say nothing 
against it ; but in those days a man's opinions were considered far more important 
than his character. We, who have reversed this way of judging, can approve both 
his character and his opinions, and remember him with honor as a great light 
shining in a dark place. He took his degrees of B. A. and M. A. in 1393, and 
1396, was ordained, became a tutor in the college, minister of the Bethlehem 
chapel, and won much fame as a preacher. In 1402 he was made rector of the 
University. The king was his friend; his feet seemed firmly planted on the 




THE LOLLARD'S TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE. 



248 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



ladder of success. If lie had been a trimmer, a prudent man of moderate views, 
keeping on the right side of the powers of this world, — if he had put his interests 
before his conscience, — he might have risen to be archbishop. " But what things 

were gain to him, 
these he counted loss 
for Christ." 

In March, 1410, 
a bull or decree from 
the pope reached 
Prague, condemning 
Wiclif 's heresies and 
giving the archbishop 
authority to do what 
he saw fit to suppress 
them. Over two 
hundred volumes of 
them, each represent- 
ing months of labor 
and the cost of many 
scores of such books 
as the printing-press 
has since made com- 
mon, were seized and 
burned. Huss re- 
fused to stop preach- 
ing, and appealed to 
the new pope in vain. 
When he repeated 
from his pulpit the 
late pope's charges of 
heresy, the congre- 
gation shouted, " He 
lies!" He inquired 
whether they would 
support his appeal, 
cobham's escape, and the vast audience 

replied, "We will !" The archbishop was hissed in the streets, and asked to pay 
for the books he had burned. Three monks who had preached against Wiclif 
were mobbed, and one of them all but drowned. 

The appeal of Huss, and the complaints against him, were referred by the 
new pope to Cardinal Colonna, who summoned him to Rome. Under advice of 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 249 

the king and other friends he refused to go, but sent two deputies, who were cast 
into prison and kept there for some time. In February, 141 1, he was excom- 
municated. He paid no attention to this, and the people of Prague stood by 
him; so the city was placed under an inderdict, which forbade all the ministra- 
tions of religion, — alike public services, sacraments, weddings, and burials. 
This was a terrible weapon when public opinion supported it ; but the king 
arranged matters with Archbishop Zbinco, who soon owned himself beaten, and 
died on the way to Rome. He was succeeded by a miserly old man who 
neglected his duties, and two years later by Conrad of Vechta, who found it 
•expedient for a time to favor the reformers. 

In those ages every reform was at the start moral rather than doctrinal. 
The corruptions of the Church, which were many and great, from the pope down 
to the obscurest priest or most ignorant monk, engaged men's minds much more 
than points of abstruse theology. Huss had won his fame and popularity by 
thundering against the worldliness and vices of the local clergy ; but as his 
horizon broadened with experience of the enmity of Rome, his sermons took a 
-wider range and a loftier flight. When a youth at college, he had spent his last 
pennies on an indulgence — a pardon of past (or sometimes of future) sins, to be 
purchased for cash ; but he was older and wiser now. At this juncture his wrath 
was roused, like Wiclif's before and Luther's afterwards, by papal emissaries 
~who traveled through Bohemia selling indulgences, to raise money for a crusade 
.against the King of Naples. Huss spoke boldly against " the power of the 
keys," denied the value of absolutions granted by men who could not save their 
■own souls, and denounced the peddlers of indulgences as thieves. 

When the pope's legate arrived at Prague, he asked Huss whether he would 
obey "the apostolical mandates." "Certainly," he answered; "that is, the 
teachings of the apostles. So far as the pope's commands agree with these, I will 
obey them cheerfully ; but not otherwise, though I stood before the stake." In 
a public disputation at the University, in June, 141 2, he used still plainer 
language. 

Disturbances now arose, for his followers thought it was for him to speak 
.and for them to act. A crowd seized some of the papal bulls of indulgence, and 
"burned them at the pillory ; the leader, a favorite of the king, went unpunished. 
A few weeks later, three young workmen or students, John Hudsk, Martin Kri- 
•desco, and Stanislaus Passec, interrupted the preachers of indulgences in as 
many churches, crying out that these lied, and that Master Huss had taught them 
better. They were at once arrested aud condemned to death. Huss begged for 
their lives, and the magistrates promised to shed no blood, but had the three 
privately beheaded. Huss preached their funeral sermon, and called them mar- 
tyrs. A tumult ensued ; the authorities became alarmed, and set free others 
'who had been imprisoned. 



250 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Huss was now again excommunicated : the pope ordered his chapel to be 
torn down, and his person handed over to the archbishop and the stake. A sin- 
gle attempt was made, in October, 141 2, to carry out this sentence ; but the con- 
gregation was so large, and so ready to fight, that the armed assailants prudently 

withdrew, after merely looking in. 
The king would allow nothing more 
to be done. Most of the people, the 
students, and the nobles were in warm 
sympathy with the reformer, though 
the clergy generally, and the Germarr 
residents, took the pope's side. To- 
ward the end of the year Huss was 
persuaded, for the sake of peace, to 
leave the city. For the next 
year or two he preached dili- 
gently to great crowds in the 
rural parts. In his treatise 
"On the Church," which ap- 
peared in 141 3, he said that 
the pope was a successor of 
the apostles only if he followed, 
their example; if he cared 
chiefly for money-getting, he 
showed himself to be the vicar,. 
J° HN HUSS - not of Christ, but of Judas. 

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 

In December, 1413, Pope John XXIII. was forced to call a general council, 
to meet eleven months later at Constance in Switzerland. The chief objects of 
this assemblage were three : First, to decide between the rival popes, one at Rome 
and the other at Avignon in France — a scandal that -had long divided and dis- 
tracted Christendom. Second, to' reform the manners of the clergy, and correct 
the abuses and corruption now generally felt and admitted. And third, to sup- 
press heresy, chiefly in Bohemia. Every bishop, monastery, university, king, 
and ruler was to be represented. The interest felt in this gathering and in its 
expected work was great and general. Nothing of the kind had been seen for 
two hundred years. Its decisions were to be final, and the questions on which it 
determined were of the highest importance. Its members came from every coun- 
try of central and western Europe, and included the ablest and most eminent 
men of these lands. Over sixty thousand are said to have been in attendance;, 
more than one-fourth of these were of noble blood. And yet this great 





2.51 



252 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

assemblage, whatever else it did or left undone, is chiefly famous for the judicial 
murder of its best and best-known man — of the man, at least whose memory is now 
cherished beyond any other of that period, who stood, in advance of all others, for 
the truest thoughts and purest cause of his time. Ask any schoolboy who has 
dipped far enough into history, or any student familiar with the later middle 
ages, " What did the Council of Constance do ? For what is it chiefly remem- 
bered ? ' : He will answer, " For breaking a safe-conduct and burning John Huss." 
The Emperor Sigismund, brother of King Wenzel, cited Huss to appear before 
the council. To go was to take his life in his hand, and a selfishly prudent man 
might have disobeyed the summons. Being what he was, he had no choice, and 
no desire other than to give his testimony and to abide the result. He doubtless 
expected from the professed reformers at Constance more sympathy than he 
found ; but he was warned by friends, and knew at least the possibility of the 
fate before him. By papers left in Bohemia he indicated this fear, disposed of 
his little property, and expressed remorse for trifling sins of his youth, such as 
losing his temper at chess before he was ordained — the heaviest offenses his con- 
science could acknowledge. Before starting he took such precautions as he could. 
He procured a certificate of his orthodoxy, strange to say, from the grand inquis- 
itor of Bohemia, and saw the archbishop and papal legate, who said he knew 
nothing against Huss except his being under excommunication. He did not 
wait for the emperor's safe-conduct, but received it later; it was in these words: 

THE SAFE-CONDUCT. 

" We have taken the honorable Master John Huss under the protection and 
guardianship of ourselves and of the Holy Empire. We enjoin on you [z. <?., all 
imperial officers] to allow him to pass, to stop, to remain, and to return, freely 
.and Avithout hindrance ; and j^ou will, as in duty bound, provide for him and 
his, whenever it shall be needed, secure and safe conduct, to the honor and dig- 
nity of our majesty." The later treatment of this paper and its bearer showed 
what the faith of kings is sometimes worth. 

He began his journey October nth, 1414, with three noblemen, his friends 
:and protectors, and an escort of some thirty horsemen. Everywhere he put up 
notices that he was going to Constance to defend his faith against any who should 
attack it. The bishop of Lubeck, who went over the road the day before, spread 
the false tidings that "Huss was being carried in chains" to the council, and 
urged the people not to look at him, for he could read their thoughts. Multi- 
tudes came to stare at the great heretic ; but he was treated with respect and 
■courtesy at every stopping-place, and disputed freely with priests and magistrates. 

He reached Constance November 2d, when the council had not opened. 
Pope John and his cardinals, who had it all their own way at that time, 
suspended his excommunication, and let him go where he pleased. Deceived 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 253-, 

"by these civilities, lie celebrated the communion at his lodgings, and meditated 
a sermon to the clergy, which should expose their vices and attack the whole 
established order of the Church. The latter would have been a scandal not 
to be allowed even in thought; the former was forbidden, but he replied that 
he had a right to consecrate and administer the elements, and meant to do- 
it. On November 28th he was summoned before the cardinals, and after a slight 
examination was detained and kept under guard. This was at the instigation of 
two of his bitterest enemies, Stephen Palecz, a former friend and associate in the 
university of Prague, and Michael Deutschbrod, called de Cansis, a priest who 
had absconded with moneys entrusted to him by King Wenzel for mining opera- 
tions, and with the proceeds of his theft had bought an interest in the trade of 
indulgences. These worthies now came to Huss, and told him that they had him 
and meant to hold him. Another conspirator was Tiera, who had brought the in- 
dulgences to Prague. 

THE SAFE-CONDUCT DISREGARDED. 

The reformer's friends protested against his arrest, but to no purpose. The 
emperor, who arrived on Chrismas day, was indignant, ordered his release, and. 
threatened to withdraw his protection from the council. But the cardinals said 
they would break up the council if the heretic was let loose. Under this prospect 
of a collision between Church and state, and of heavy penalties against himself, 
Sigismund yielded, breaking his plighted word and losing his honor. All his 
later career was of a piece with this beginning ; he was a faithless and dishonest 
monarch. The doctrine that no faith was to be kept with heretics, and that 
one plausibly accused of heresy was to be counted guilty, though then new in 
Germany, was long familiar in the Latin countries, and even regarded as a prin- 
ciple of the canon or Church law. The fact has often been denied of late, but 
this denial proves only that our modern views of truth and duty are happily dif- 
ferent from those of the Middle Ages. 

On this ground the emperor excused himself, June 7th, 1415: "Many say 
that we cannot under the law protect a heretic or one suspected of heresy." Im 
answer to indignant protests from the nobles of Bohemia and Moravia, he strove 
to excuse himself by claiming, in effect, that in such matters civil authorities and 
secular conscience must give way to the Church. " On this account," he wrote, 
"we even left Constance till they declared to us that if we would not allow justice 
to be done, they knew not what business they had to be there. Then we con- 
cluded that we could do nothing, not even speak of the affair." 

The council itself used the plainest possible language in a decree passed 
September 23d, 1415, declaring that "whatever safe-conduct may be given by 
emperor, king, or prince to heretics or persons accused of heresy, it cannot and 
ought not to cause any harm to the Catholic faith or hindrance to the Church's 
jurisdiction; but that it is allowable, in spite of the safe-conduct, for any competent 



254 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



ecclesiastical judge to inquire into the errors of such persons, and to punish them 
as they deserve if they will not recant, even though they come to the place of judg- 
ment trusting to the safe-conduct, and would not have come otherwise" These 
eminent guides of the blind can hardly have been acquainted with St. Paul's 
severe sentence (Romans iii. 8) on those who say, "Let us do evil that good may 



come. 



Another precious decree of this council justifies the emperor for breaking 
Ms word, since "John Huss had by his heretical opinions utterly forfeited all 




LUTTERWORTH CHURCH. 



right and privilege, and no faith whatever, either by natural, human, or divine 
right, ought to be kept with him to the prejudice of the Catholic faith." It goes 
on to say that all true Christians must cease to complain of the acts of the coun- 
cil toward Huss, and that any who continue grumbling will be punished as ene- 
mies of the Church and traitors to the emperor. It would perhaps be too much 
to claim that leligious bodies have in our time neither will nor power thus to 
pervert men's consciences and play ducks and drakes with right and wrong; 
"but happily they can no longer (unless in Russia) call in the state to enforce 
their decrees with chains and fagots. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE MARTYRS OF CONSTANCE. 




priests ; 



ROM December 6th to March 24th, Huss was 
kept in a cell of the Dominican convent 
Here he was kindly treated, and allowed the 
use of pen, ink, and paper, but not of books. 
Hoping to intercept some of the letters he 
sent out secretly, one of his chief foes, Michael 
de Cansis, spent much time about the gate, 
with the remark, " By God's grace, we shall 
burn this heretic who has cost me so many 
florins." This same Michael drew up, or lent 
his name to, the articles of accusation against 
the prisoner. The chief crimes charged were 
these : asserting that the bread in the eucharist 
remained bread after its consecration ; denying 
the power of the keys and the validity of the 
sacraments when administered by wicked 
holding that the Church should have no temporal possessions ; disre- 



garding excommunication ; granting the cup to the laity ; defending the forty-five 
condemned articles of Wiclif ; exciting the people against the clergy, so that if 
he were allowed to return to Prague there would be a persecution such as had not 
been seen since the days of Constantine." 

His former friend, Palecz, made a list of forty-two alleged errors found in 
his writings : these he answered at length. He was several times examined in 
his cell, and replied to all questions mildly and moderately, denying much that 
was imputed to him. His opinions were not in all respects so advanced as those 
of later reformers. But his fate was determined on beforehand ; he was con- 
demned, as his friends loudly insisted, on the testimony of his mortal foes, and 
largely on grounds foreign to the real issue between him and the pope. 

On March 24th he was transferred to the castle of Gottlieben, across the 
Rhine. Here he soon had for a fellow-prisoner John XXIIL, who, seeing mat- 
ters going against him at the council, fled, but was caught and carried back. 
The pope, who was shortly condemned for the very vices and corruptions which 

(255) 




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256 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 257 

Wiclif had denounced, pleaded guilty, and was given a good post by bis suc- 
cessor : the reformer, who had nothing to confess, was reserved for those earthly 
flames which were supposed to prefigure the torments of misbelievers in a future 
life. 

HUSS IN PRISON. 

He was spared the torture, which in those days was almost always inflicted 
on persons accused of heresy ; but he suffered much in body and in mind. Kept 
in chains at the top of a high tower, half starved, and allowed to see no one, he 
was attacked by disease, and at one time was thought to be at the point of death. 
He had no fanatical exaltation, no stoical pride, no joy in the prospect of mar- 
tyrdom ; at times he still hoped to escape from the cruel end that awaited him. 
His temper was meek and gentle, wholly free from rancor or resentment ; for his 
malignant enemies he had only full forgiveness. He could not lie, he would 
not deny the truth nor recede from his position ; he was resigned to the fate he 
might in his simplicity and singleness of heart have seemed to provoke, but 
had never coveted. In his prison he wrote a hymn in praise of that sacrament 
whose virtue he was accused of denying. " Since Christ," says one of his 
biographers, "no man has left a more affecting example of the true Christian 
spirit ; he was one of the chosen few who exalt and glorify humanity." Yet 
Palecz, a scholar and once his friend, staked his soul on the huge assertion 
that since Christianity began there had been no more dangerous heretic than 
Huss ! Through such blunders the word heresy has come to have less meaning, 
and far less terror, to us than it had to our ancestors. 

The trial of Huss, after that of his Master, is probably the most famous 
one in history. To try a man for his opinions is to the modern mind an 
absurdity ; and perhaps it was in keeping that in such trials there should have 
been so little pretence of reasonableness or fairness. The accused was allowed 
no advocate and no witnesses, while against him were arrayed all the malig- 
nity and all the learning of his personal or official foes. He was bound, 
while they were free ; his guilt was practically taken for granted : it was a case 
of "give a dog a bad name and hang him." 

The proceedings against Huss were in their earlier stages conducted pri- 
vately, as has been said, but the records of them were fully kept. The policy 
of the Inquisition was to delay, to weary and overawe its victim, and, if possible, 
to procure his submission. A recantation, on the part of a prominent teacher 
and leader, would be far more edifying and useful than a burning. Had Huss 
been brought so low, he would have been degraded from the priesthood and im- 
prisoned for life ; but this he probably did not know at first. The chief Bohe- 
mian members of the council, who were still his faithful partisans, aimed to 
expedite his trial, hoping to save him. On May 13th and 31st they presented 
memorials, complaining of the treatment he had received, and asking that his 



2 5 8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



case be heard speedily in public. A few days later lie was brought back, still 
iu chains, to Constance, and immured in the Franciscan convent. The prose- 
cutors still meant to deny him a hearing- ; but his friends appealed to the 
emperor, who ordered that nothing should be done till Huss and his books were 
before the council. 

At length, on June 5th, he was brought in, and again on the 7th and 
8th ; but the situation was very different from that which he had imagined 




when he came to 

Constance seven 

months before. He 

had expected a 

free discussion, in view of constance. 

which his eloquence, learning, and logic 

might have a chance to triumph over 

ancient prejudice and selfish greed: he found himself condemned in advance, 

listened to with impatience, or not at all. The emperor, to whose protection 

he had trusted, frowned and advised him to submit, saying, "We will never 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 259 

defend you in your errors and obstinacy. Rather than that, we will prepare 
the fire for you with our own hands." The council was at times a howling 
mob, on which his courage, coolness, and ability of thought and speech were 
simply thrown away. He acknowledged his writings, and was ordered to answer 
yes or no to each article of accusation : when he attempted to explain — and in 
such matters explanations are essential — his voice was lost in the noise of the 
assembly. If he asked to be shown in what he had erred, they told him he must 
first recant. They flung questions at him from every side, not waiting for the 
answers; and some cried, "Burn him! " After three days of this he could hardly 
stand or speak, but he still asked in vain for another hearing, and exclaimed, 
"For the love of God, do not force me to wrong my conscience ! " When he in- 
sisted that opinions were charged against him which he never held, the emperor 
stupidly asked him, "If they are not yours, why cannot you renounce them ?" 
and he had to explain that to recant or abjure meant to give up tenets which one 
had held or taught, to confess oneself guilty — which, as to some of the accusa- 
tions, would be swearing to a lie. Thus he was caught between two fires ; the 
stake in this world, the punishment of perjury in the next. 

As he was led out on the third day, his steady friend, John of Chlum, man- 
aged to grasp his hand, to look him in the eye for a moment, and to whisper a 
word of love : it was almost the only sign of human sympathy which reached him 
throughout this bitter struggle. For four weeks more the contest lasted, and, as 
Mr. Lea, the historian of the Inquisition, declares, "No human soul ever bore itself 
with loftier fortitude or sweeter or humbler charity." With amazing forgiveness 
and meekness, he chose for a confessor his bitterest enemy, Stephen Palecz. This 
man urged him to recant, and not to mind the humiliation of it. Said Huss, "The 
humiliation of being condemned and burned is greater : how then can I fear the 
disgrace ? But advise me : What would you do if you knew you did not hold the 
errors you were accused of? Would you abjure them ? " Palecz owned that it was 
not an easy question, and broke down completely when Huss asked his pardon for 
any offense given in their past controversies, as for calling him a false witness. 
He retired from his impossible office, perhaps feeling that he was in the position 
of Caiaphas confessing Christ. Others succeeded ; one of them, setting the spirit 
of the law above the letter, gave the martyr a needless absolution. The rest 
urged him to submit, and one of the theologians said, " If the council told me I 
had but one eye, I would confess it to be so, though I knew I had two." But 
Huss had higher standards, and set his conscience above his life. 

All the arts of persuasion were now tried. One of the cardinals called him 
"dearest and most cherished brother," and tried to make him believe that any 
guilt of his submission, as perjury or condemnation of truth, would rest upon the 
council, not on him ; one should not trust to his owu judgment against that of 
the Church. But Huss, a Protestant in essential principle, knew better, and 



— ^-^— 



260 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



was not to be thus deceived. Concessions beyond precedent were made, to meet 
lis scruples. On June 8th lie had been told that his full submission might be 
admitted with a merely partial recantation of the errors imputed to him. On 
July 5th, as a last effort, this was carried further: if he would only abjure the 
heresies claimed to be found in his own writings, he might deny those attested 
by his accusers. But he was not to be moved, and said the extracts from 
his books had been garbled : if they could prove him to be in error on any point, 
he would disown that error ; he could not disown the truth. 




STONES AT CARNAC. 

Tradition represents them as an army of heathen warriors stiffened into stone. 

Long since he had given up the hope of escape, and reconciled himself, as 
best he could, to the inevitable. Other martyrs have been made of sterner 
stuff, or buoyed up by more ecstatic fancies. Huss was no Spartan hero, but 
very human ; he had no indifference to pain, no iron endurance. His last writ- 
ings record the agony of his mental conflict; but he was no coward, no traitor to' 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



261 



his convictions and his cause. On June 18th he drew up for his friends at home 
an account of the trial, and ended, "It remains only for me to abjure and un- 
dergo fearful penance, or to burn. May Father, Son, and Holy Ghost grant 




TRIAL OF HUSS.— DEGRADING THE MARTYR. 



me the spirit of wisdom and fortitude to persevere to the end, and escape the 
snares of Satan ! " 

On the fatal day, July 6th, 14 15, he was led to the cathedral, and kept outside 
the door till the mass was over. Then he listened to a sermon by an Italian 
bishop, who told the emperor that what was then transacted would make 
him forever famous — which was true, though not in the sense intended. The 



262 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

charges on which he was convicted were read, and his protests were silenced. 
He said, "I came here of my own free will. Had I refused to come, neither 
the king nor the emperor could have compelled me, for there are many nobles 
in Bohemia who love me and would have protected me." A cardinal cried out, 
"See the fellow's impudence ! " But John of Chlum said, "It is true. I could 
easily keep him safe for a year against both king and emperor, and others are 
stronger than I." Hnss went on: "I came here, on the emperor's promise 
that I should be free from all constraint, to bear witness to my innocence and to 
answer for my faith to all who question it." He looked straight at Sigismund, 
who turned very red: as Mr. Lea says, "that blush was the only item in the 
whole affair that is to the monarch's credit." 

His sentence was read, condemning him as an incorrigible heretic, to be 
degraded and given over to the justice of the state. Seven bishops put the 
priestly robes on him and warned him to recant. He said, as he had often 
said before, that he could not lie to God. The robes were taken off, and the 
tonsure destroyed by cutting a cross in his hair. A paper cap eighteen inches 
high, with devils painted on it and the words, " This is the arch-heretic," was 
put on his head. The emperor turned him over to the Palsgrave Louis, and 
he to the officer who had charge of executions, saying, "Take him as judged 
by us both, and burn him as a heretic." He was led out of the cathedral, and 
the council "calmly turned to other business, unconscious that it had performed 
the most momentous act of the century." 

Guarded by two thousand soldiers and followed by a multitude of every 
rank, he was led through the streets, past the bishop's palace, where he smiled 
to see his books burning, and to a field near the river. Here he knelt in sight 
of the stake. A priest offered to confess him if he would recant ; if not, he 
could not receive absolution. He replied, "It is not necessary; I am no mortal 
sinner." He smiled again as the guards replaced his paper cap, which had 
fallen off. He took leave kindly of his recent jailers, and began a speech in 
German, but was silenced and fastened to the stake. Two cartloads of wood 
and straw were piled about him, and then he was offered his life if he would 
recant ; but he said again that he had been convicted of -errors he never held. 
The officers clapped their hands and retired ; the pile was set on fire. The 
martyr cried twice, " Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me !" 
After the wind blew the smoke and flame into his face, his lips were seen to 
move for a few moments ; but no groan, no sign of weakness or pain, escaped 
him. His last trial was brief, and endured as blamelessly as had been his long 
imprisonment and his manful contest for the faith. 

His mantle was taken from oneof the executioners and cast into the flames; 
his body was burned to ashes and thrown into the Rhine ; " even the earth about 
the stake was dug up and carted off." These extraordinary pains were taken 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



263 



to prevent the Bohemians from obtaining relics of their great leader ; yet they 
"long hovered about the spot, and carried home fragments of the neighboring 
clay." On the following day the emperor, many princes and men of rank, nine- 
teen cardinals, seventy-seven bishops, and all the clerical members of the coun- 
cil, joined in a procession and solemnly gave thanks to God for what had been 
accomplished for His glory. 

JEROME OF PRAGUE. 

If the council expected, by its treatment of Huss, to appease the ferment 
in Bohemia, it was much mistaken. He was venerated there as a saint, and the 
day of his death inserted as a feast in the calendar ; hymns and songs were com- 
posed in his honor, and sung by the people in the streets ; and the" barons, as 
soon as the news arrived, sent on an 
indignant protest. In August, on 
receiving a letter from the council 
exhorting the authorities to put down 
any remaining heresy, a national 
assembly was called, and near five 
hundred nobles and gentlemen signed 
a defiant address, setting 
forth their belief in the 
orthodoxy and integrity of 
Huss, and in the injustice 
of his conviction and execu- 
tion ; their regrets for his 
friend Jerome, whom they 
supposed to have been like- 
wise dealt with ; and their 
anger against the liars and 
traitors, who had accused 
their country of anything 
wrong. A yet more revolu- 
tionary document announced 
that foreign excommunica- 
tions and interdicts would not be regarded ; that priests should have freedom 
to preach the gospel ; and that bishops should not disturb them except when 
they taught amiss. 

The council could not recede, and this defiance could only increase the 
danger of Jerome of Prague, then a prisoner in its hands. The name of this 
singular man is inextricably linked with that of Huss, whose views, efforts, and 
fate he shared, though their characters were widely different. Far less steady 
and blameless, Jerome was far more versatile and brilliant. In ancient or 




JEROME OF PRAGUE. 



264 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

modern times literature, science, or some other secular field would have claimed 
his energies, rather than the Church ; but in that age religion was the only- 
resource of a scholar. Of mercurial temper and highly nervous organization, he 
was adventurous, audacious, and often reckless. At once more learned and more 
radical than his master, he had taken degrees at Paris, Cologne, Heidelberg, 
and Cracow, and copied some of Wiclit's books at Oxford. He had traveled 
almost everywhere, even in the Holy Land. He was a fiery preacher / and had 
done missionary work in Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Wherever he went he 
carried the new doctrines, and, urging them with more zeal than prudence, was 
expelled from most of the countries he visited, as earlier from the University of 
Paris. In England and Vienna he was imprisoned as a heretic. At home 
alone was he safe and honored, but he could not be content to stay there long. 
He was the most active supporter of Huss, though sometimes by methods not 
to his leader's approval. It is said that he was prominent in the riots at Prague, 
and even that he hung the pope's bulls about the neck of a loose woman, and 
so conveyed them to the burning. He carried a sword and knew how to use it: 
the tale of his adventures, if we had them all in detail, would make-lively 
reading. This phenomenon, with his dash, magnetism, fine appearance, noble 
voice, varied accomplishments, vast attainments, and wonderful command of all 
his stores and resources, lacked nothing but stability, and belonged rather among 
the men of mystery and magic who flourished somewhat later than to the sober 
and heroic company of reformers. He was well adapted to make a figure and 
cause a sensation anywhere ; but he ought to have kept away from Constance. 
There, however, he went early in April, 14 15, to see what he could do for his 
imprisoned friend. Finding that he could do nothing of any use, he should 
have withdrawn at once ; but it was his nature to go and come, dashing iuto 
and away from danger. Twice he fastened notices on the church-doors, and 
twice he escaped from the city. The first of these proclamations asserted 
that Huss was orthodox, which nobody would believe on his credit ; the other 
announced to the emperor and the council that he was on hand, ready to 
reply to any charge of heresy and to bear the punishment if convicted, but 
that he wanted a safe-conduct, and if treated ill, would regard such action as 
unbecoming scholars. Two days after this strange performance he started for 
home, but on the way was arrested at Hirsan in Bavaria, and held till the coun- 
cil could be heard from. Meantime that body had summoned him three times 
as a heretic. On May 24th he was brought back to Constance in chains, and 
subjected to an imprisonment more severe than that of Huss. 

JEROME RECANTS. 

It is needless to give the details of his last year on earth ; the record is less 
edifying than that of his teacher's constancy under trial. At first he defended 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 2 6 5 

himself with his accustomed brilliancy ; but confinement through the summer 
and the prospect of a death like that of Huss were too much for his courage, 
and it gave way. On September i ith, he read a long and formal recantation 
before the council, and twelve days later another. It is pitiful to think of this 
recent champion of progress denouncing the doctrine which he had spread so vig- 
orously, writing home to Bohemia (as he was required to do) that the national 




JEROME SPEAKING AT HIS TRIAL. 



prophet, his master, had been justly burned, and from the pulpit invoking a 
curse on all who wandered from the faith (according to the pope), including all 
the friends of his adult life, and on himself if he should return to the errors of 
Wiclif and Huss. 




266 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 267 

But this was not to last. We count no man happy or wretched till his earthly 
career is ended, for the end crowns and stamps the life. As the tree falleth, so* 
shall it lie ; but it is given to some human trees to fall and rise again. Con- 
science and self-respect were not dead in the apostate, and the wise men of the 
council were not wise enough to keep what they had gained. It was their custom 
to flatter with false promises till their victim gave way, and then leave him to the 
rigors of the law. Finding that a heretic who had recanted avoided little or 
nothing but death, Jerome came by degrees to himself again. His accusers, 
Palecz, de Causis, and the rest, were still watching his symptoms. John Gerson, 
chancellor of the great University of Paris, a man of most eminent attainments, 
repute, and character, supposed by some to be the author of that famous "Imita- 
tion of Christ" which bears the name of Thomas a Kempis, was Jerome's enemy 
of old, having had trouble with this too zealous reformer when a student ; he 
brought the case again before the council in October, and attacked the past record 
of this doubtful penitent. The matter was in suspense till February, 1416, when 
a new trial was begun. In sundry private examinations, lasting throughout the 
spring, he baffled, perplexed, and confounded the inquisitors. On May 26th, he- 
was allowed to speak before the council, and never had he been more powerful 
than in recanting his recantation. "I am but a man," he said in substance. 
"I weakly yielded to persuasion and dread of the fire. Your judges know what 
their promises were, and how they have been kept. No sin of my life weighs 
upon my conscience like that cowardly disowning of all I held dear, that dishonor 
done to him whom I still love and reverence. Wiclif wrote with deeper truth 
than any before him; and as for Huss, he was a just and holy man, with whom 
be my eternal portion." He passed to a terrific arraignment of the corruptions 
which had called forth Wiclif and Huss — the confessed vices of the papal court, 
and of the clergy in general. Openness of mind was not the leading trait of 
theologians in that age ; but such of the council as had any of it must have been 
impressed by Jerome's oration. The secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, says that " he 
stood fearless, undaunted, not merely despising death, but longing for it, like 
another Cato. A man worthy of eternal remembrance among men ! If he held 
beliefs contrary to the Church's rules, I do not praise him ; but I admire his 
learning, his knowledge of so many things, his eloquence, and the subtlety of his 1 
answers." 

JEROME'S FATE. 

He was given four days of grace, and on May 30th was called up for 
sentence. The bishop of Lodi, who had preached at the condemnation of Huss, 
was again chosen to set forth the amenities of the occasion. He said it was a. 
scandal that men of low birth like Huss and Jerome should have the impudence 
to mislead their betters, and disturb such a noble kingdom as Bavaria. Then, 
turning to the prisoner, he charitably remarked: "You were not tortured; I wish 



268 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



you had been, for it would have forced you to vomit up all your errors. It would 
have opened your eyes, which sin had closed." Jerome spoke briefly, lamenting 
again his base recantation. He was handed over to the officers, and put on the paper 
cap, saying, "I gladly wear this for His sake who wore the crown of thorns for 
me." By ten in the morning he was at the stake, on the spot where Huss had 
died. The executioner was about to apply fire from the rear, but he said, " Light 
it where I can see it. If I had feared this, I would not be here." Seeing a poor 
and ignorant old man bringing fagots, he smiled and said : "Holy simplicity ! The 
guilt is his who has misled thee." He was of more vigorous frame than Huss, 
and his agouy lasted longer, but he bore it with entire dignity and firmness. 
^Eneas Sylvius, afterwards pope, joins the two as models of fortitude In the 
judgment of his contemporaries, Jerome's ending atoned for his former errors; 
and we may take the same view. 

John of Chlum, the steady friend of Huss, was brought to a recantation like 
that of Jerome. As he was a nobleman and not a scholar, no particulars of the 
proceedings in his case remain ; but doubtless it was under heavy pressure, and 
from the lips, not from the heart, that he justified the execution of his friends, 
and swore to maintain the faith, not as it is in Jesus, but as it was according to 
.the popes. 




at <J od .^90 tb w M&toiwtf TCas m ft toflP 
ftpug atgob ell? pin$5 tbe^u m9) tojwm? 

FAC-SIMILE OF A PART OF WICIJF'S BIBLE. 



\i 



) 



i 




CHAPTER XVIII. 



TROUBLES IN BOHEMIA. 



EANTIME matters had been advancing so rapidly 

in Bohemia that by Jerome's death the relations 

of that country with the Church were more 

jVl^f^' -i^W^B than strained. The use of the cup in the com- 

^^T^^^Wj^ v^^ m union, reviving an old national custom, had 

& *A been introduced in Prague while Huss was in 

Constance ; it spread everywhere, and excited an 
ithusiasm to be understood only when we remember 
that zeal for the eucharist was always a striking trait 
of piety in that region. Communion in both elements 
became the leading principle, and "the cup" the watch- 
word of Bohemian rebellion and reformation. 

Immediately after the execution of Huss, the council 
tried to establish the methods of the Inquisition in Bohe- 
mia, which hitherto had been happily free from this most doleful experience 
of other lands. An inquisitor had been there, as we have seen, but his office 
had been nominal, and he had done nothing. So little, indeed, had he been 
imbued with the spirit of his order, that he freely certified to the orthodoxy 
of Huss. All this was now to be changed. On August 31st, 141 5, "Iron 
John," the bishop of Litomysl, received powers to suppress heresy in Bohemia; 
but his person and his purpose alike were so far from being acceptable at home 
that he dared not show his face there. Three weeks later two other prelates, 
foreigners (the patriarch of Constantinople and John of Senlis), were appointed 
a commission to try Hussite Christians and to summon them to Rome for 
trial. But they had no mind to be tried. They thought their beloved teacher 
had exhibited meekness enough for them all ; they were infuriated by the treat- 
ment he had received; they revered his memory as that of a saint; and they 
meant to stand up for their beliefs and their rights. It must be owned that for 
some time they were quite able to do so, and carried on their share of fighting 
and persecuting. 

In December, 141 5, the nobles sent another address to Constance, again 
accusing the council of bad faith and injustice in the prosecution and death of 

Huss, and disowning its authority. In return they and their sympathizers were 

(269) 



27o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

summoned to appear and answer to the charge of heresy. To attempt to serve this 
paper would have been as perilous as to obey its call, and it was simply posted 
to church doors in four German cities. In March, 14 16, the council appealed to 
certain barons of their party (for there were some such in Bohemia) , setting forth 
their own tenderness and patience towards Huss, the wickedness of his followers, 
the alarming spread of their teachings, and the cruelties practiced on monks and 
p'riests; they urged these lords to help the legate, John of Litomysl, and to 
stamp out the growing evil. Nothing came of this effort (at that time), nor of 
the emperor's threat of a Catholic crusade. In May the University of Prague 
put forth a warm defense and eulogy of Huss and Jerome. In December the 
council wrote to Sigismund, complaining of the terrible state of things in Bohe- 
mia, and calling on him to suppress these disorders. He promised to help his 
brother to do so. But King Wenzel was an easy, indolent monarch, more given 
to the bottle than to his duties, half in sympathy with his people and their cause, 
and with little will or power to serve the pope. 

CALIXTINES AND TABORITES. 

The reform of doctrine and practice went on vigorously, undeterred by the 
.archbishop's interdict and the threats of the emperor and council. In 141 7 the 
university sanctioned the cause of utraquism or communion in both kinds, and 
declared that no ordinance of man could change or set aside the command of 
Christ and the custom of the early Church. Already there were two parties : the 
Calixtines (from calix, cup) were moderate reformers and thought enough had 
been gained; the Taborites (so named from a hill where they used to meet) were 
ready to go much farther. Some denied the existence of purgatory, objected to 
relics, images, prayers for the dead, invocation of the Virgin and saints, and 
.sundry other customs then generally received. Some held that anybody could 
administer baptism in any place, and that consecrated buildings were not neces- 
sary to the worship of God. We moderns are obliged to sympathize partly with 
these views : but they were then considered so dangerous that the university twice 
declared against them. There were still Waldenses, who condemned oaths and 
capital punishments, and regarded the value of sacraments as dependent on the 
character of those who conveyed them ; even these extreme opinions made head- 
way in some quarters, and were denounced in others. 

With all this ferment there could not but be much hard feeling and much 
disorder. The Protestants of that day had little more idea of toleration than the 
popes; each individual was sure that his own position was the right one, and 
men could not agree to differ. Nor were all in Bohemia of one mind in opposing 
pope and council. There were German miners in the mountains, who killed the 
reformers in their neighborhood; there were priests and nobles who would gladly 
do as much, if given a convenient opportunity. The Hussites of both parties 




TOWER OF BRIDGE OF PRAGUE. TO WHICH THE HEADS OF MARTYRS WERE AFFIXED. 



271 



272 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



were continually irritated by new measures taken against them from without. 
Catholic Christendom was now reunited under a vigorous pope, Martin V., he who 
as Cardinal Colonnahad sat in judgment on the case of Huss and excommunicated 
him in 141 1 ; he meant to accomplish more than his predecessors. In February, 
141 8, he issued orders to the inquisitors, bishops, and priests of Bohemia and the 




OUTRAGE AT PRAGUE 



adjoining countries, to pursue, arrest, and punish all those who did not adhere 
to Rome. At the same time the council required King Wenzel to do his part. 
But not much, as yet, came from these proclamations, for the emperor kept his 
promises only when it suited him, and usually contented himself with exhorting 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 273 

and threatening his lazy brother. It is not easy to proceed against a whole king- 
dom, except by getting a sufficient force from outside. 

The Taborites were growing apace; on one day, July 22d, 1419, no less than 
forty thousand of them met on their hill. Some wished to depose Wenzel ; but 
their leader, Coranda, sensibly reminded them that as what they wanted was 
liberty, King Log might suit their purpose better than King Stork, and it was 
prudent to let well alone. 

WAR BEGINS. 

But Wenzel's days were numbered. Jealous of the small remnants of his 
authority, which was little respected by the Hussites, he withdrew several times 
from Prague. His soldiers and adherents had difficulties with the people, and 
closed a few of their churches. A force led by Zisca entered the city on July 30th,, 
and some of them broke into a church, hung the priest from the window of his 
parsonage, and then celebrated the communion. The incongruity between these 
actions, so striking to us, was not apparent to them. Then they marched to the 
council-house and demanded the release of some of their brethren, who had been 
put in prison. A stone flung from a window struck their minister. That stone, 
it has been said, began the Hussite war. With Zisca at their head, they forced 
their way into the building. Eleven councillors escaped ; seven, who were Ger- 
mans, were caught, thrown from the windows, and killed by the crowd below. 
The news of this affair so enraged the king that he had a stroke of paralysis, and 
died August 15th. His fury, with its fatal result, is said to have been caused 
not so much by these deeds of violence as by the fact that the citizens at once 
elected new magistrates without consulting him. 

A period of anarchy ensued. Within a few days after Wenzel's death 
churches and convents were attacked and despoiled, the Carthusian and Domin- 
ican monasteries burned down, and the monks made prisoners. The disturbances 
extended to the country, and a crowd of peasants came to Prague. The emperor 
Sigismund succeeded to his brother's crown ; till he could arrive on the scene y 
the queen acted as regent. After some weeks of truce she fled, for the citizens, 
learning that her officers had sent to Germany for troops, attacked the castle and 
called Zisca to their aid. 

The real name of this famous man was John of Trocznow ; he was called 
Zisca (one-eyed) from having lost an eye in battle. He came of poor but noble 
parents, and was said to have family reasons for hating priests. This, and a 
strong national feeling, seem to have been at the bottom of his fierce attachment 
to the cause of reform. He was much less a pietist than a soldier, for revenge 
was his ruling motive. At court he had gained favor as the king's chamberlain. 
After the news came of the martyrdom of Huss, he was one day in gloomy 
meditation in the palace courts. His master asked what troubled him. He 
answered, "The grievous affront that had been offered to this nation." Said the 



274 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



old king, " You and I are not in a condition to avenge it ; but if you can find 
the means, take courage and pay them all we owe." Thus encouraged, he bided 
his time, and when that time came, acted out the advice in full. 

After four days' fighting in the city, the garrison still holding the castle, 
a truce was agreed on, which was presently broken. Barbarities were abundant 
on both sides ; the Protestant historians chiefly relate those of their enemies. A 
Hussite preacher, who had been visiting the sick, was seized on the highway and 




TABORITES SELECTING A PASTOR. 

sold to some Bavarian troops. 
They asked him to disown the cup, 
which he refused to do. His hands 
were pierced with swords, cords 
were drawn through the holes, and thus he was bound to a tree and burned to death. 
Many were thrown into wells or pits. Some were starved in jail. Sixteen 
hundred are said to have perished by these methods. Meantime Zisca and the 
Taborites were not idle. A desultory war went on throughout the kingdom, 



THE STORY" OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 275 

and it was the horrid practice of both parties to cut off the feet and hands of 
their prisoners. 

SIGISMUND KING. 

In December Sigismund arrived at Brunn in Moravia, and demanded the al- 
legiance of his subjects. Many of them were unwilling, for he was hated for the 
death of Huss, and the extremists would have liked a republic. But the divine 
right of hereditary kings was not to be set aside, and the barons and deputations 
from the cities went to meet him. Toward the end of the year (1419) he received 
the embassy from Prague. He was very angry with his capital, but not ready to 
proceed to extremities ; so he made vague and doubtful promises. The citizens 
agreed to remove the chains from their streets, to destroy their forts and entrench- 
ments, and to stop molesting monks and priests. Having gained these points, 
he presently showed his hand, by removing Hussite magistrates, and filling all 
posts of importance with his own trusty partisans. On January 9th, 1420, John 
of Chodecz, a man of note, with three ministers and many laymen, was thrown 
into a deep well. It was easy to excuse such deeds as reprisals for those of the 
Taborites, who had sacked and burned several hundred convents, forty of them 
in Prague ; but the question was, was the new king going to respect the rights 
of his subjects or not? 

It soon appeared that he was not going to do any such thing. To Czenko, 
governor of the castle of Prague, he wrote: "Exterminate the Horebites." 
This letter and others fell into the hands of the Hussites ; and the fate of two of 
their brethren made their prospects yet more clear. Krasa, a merchant visiting 
Breslau, for the crime of talking somewhat freely about Huss and the commu- 
nion in both elements, was ordered to be dragged by the heels to the stake and 
burned. Nicholas, a student, was sent to Sigismund with a message that Prague 
would receive and acknowledge him if he would allow the use of the cup. The 
monarch flew into a rage and sentenced him to share Krasa's fate. In their 
prison the merchant encouraged the youth, reminding him of the trials of 
the ancient martyrs, and of their reward. On March 15th, 1420, Nicholas was led 
out to die ; but his courage gave way as his ankles were being tied to the horse, 
and he recanted. Krasa, unmoved, was slowly dragged through the streets on 
his back. The pope's legate followed, and several times halted the procession 
and exhorted him to save his life; but he answered, "I am ready to die for the 
gospel of Jesus." He was tied to the stake half-dead, and so finished. Two 
days after this fit beginning, the pope's bull for an exterminating crusade against 
the Hussites was posted on church doors and read from pulpits. 

The far-seeing Zisca waited no longer, — if indeed he had waited so long, — 
but went to work to fortify Mount Tabor. This rocky hill, some fifty miles south 
ot Prague, was admirably fitted by nature for uses of retreat and defense, and a 
little later became famous as the hiding-place and battle-field of the fiercest 



276 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



asserters of liberty in Europe. But before its day of glory arrived, many suffer- 
ings were endured by those who had not the advantage of its shelter. 

MORE MURDERS. 

Pescheck, the Taborite historian, who claims all virtue for his party, and calls 
the Calixtines "degenerate, rude, and cruel," says that a price was set on the 
heads of the faithful, five guilders for a minister, and one for a layman, " which 




gave occasion to many horrid butcher- 
ies." Of some of these he gives par- 
ticulars. Pichel, the burgomaster of 
Leitmoritz, seized in one night twenty- 
four respectable citizens, his own son-in-law among them, threw them into a deep 
dungeon, and, when they were half-dead from cold and hunger, had them taken 
out, chained on wagons, and combed to the banks of the Elbe. A crowd gathered, 
among them the wives and children of the prisoners, lamenting loudly. Pichel's> 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 277 

daughter and only child knelt at his feet, begging for her husband's life. He 
answered brutally : "Spare your tears ; you can have a better one than he." She 
rose and said: "You shall not give me in marriage again." Tearing her hair and 
beating her breast, she followed her husband. At the river's bank the martyrs were 
thrown from the wagons. They raised their voices, calling earth and heaven to 
witness that they had done no wrong. Then, bidding farewell to wives, children, and 
friends, they exhorted them to constancy and zeal, and to obey God rather than 
man. Filially, they prayed for their enemies, and commended their souls to God. 
Their hands and feet were tied together, they were put into boats, rowed to the 
middle of the river, and cast into the water. Along the banks stood men with 
pikes ; when any came floating near the shore, they stabbed him or pushed him 
back. The burgomaster's daughter, watching her opportunity, sprang into the 
river, seized her husband, and strove in vain to loosen his bonds and draw him 
to the land. They sank together, and were found the next day, his helpless form 
clasped in her faithful arms ; one grave received them. This was on May 30th, 
1420. 

At a village near Miliczin, some Austrian troops arrested the minister and 
Iris assistant, with three peasants and four young children. They were taken 
before the general at Bistritz, who sent them to the bishop. He ordered them to 
give up the use of the cup. He replied: "The gospel teaches it, and your mass- 
books say the same; so it must be right, unless you renounce the Scriptures." 
Angered at. his boldness, a soldier struck him in the face, drawing blood. They 
were sent about between the bishop and the general through the night, and on the 
next morning, Sunday, July 7th, were fastened to a stake, the children in the 
minister's lap. Again the bishop required them to renounce the cup. The min- 
ister answered for all: " Far be it from us ! We will rather die a hundred deaths 
than deny the plain teaching of the gospel." And so they were burned. It 
seems strange that any one should have wished to kill infants (the oldest of the 
four is said to have been but eleven) for a point they could not understand; but 
all the pagan brutality survived in the fifteenth Christian century, and longer 
too. As has been often noticed, religious bigotry has power to muddle the heads 
as well as harden the hearts of men and women. The executions of Huss and 
Jerome, and probably of these poor country parsons and peasants, were quite 
.according to law ; and all we can say is that the law of those days was extremely 
bad, and the ideas on which it was based were false ones. 

OPEN REBELLION. 

Pescheck says that Conrad, for some years archbishop of Prague, was so 
disgusted by these cruelties that he laid down his office and joined the Utra- 
quists or Calixtines. His resignation opened the way for a much worse man 
Iron John of Litomysl. But the Bohemians did not propose to give up either 




BOHEMIAN WOMEN FIGHTING FROM THEIR BAGGAGE WAGONS. 



278 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 279 

their faith or their lives if they could help it, and since the commencement of 
the crusade against them it had been war to the knife. John the Premonstrant, 
a former monk, expounded the Apocalypse, and raged against the emperor as 
the Great P_ed Dragon of St. John's vision. Zisca and the barons disowned 
allegiance 1o the persecutor, and formed a league of rebellion. The people of 
Prague swore never to receive Sigismund as their king, and sent letters to the 
other cities, urging them to take the same stand. The royal troops besieged 
Pilsen, which was surrendered on terms, and then treacherously attacked the 
Hussites on their retreat. Having no cavalry, the latter protected themselves 
by arranging their baggage- wagons in a circle, and thus repelled the enemy. 
This was the battle of Sudomertz, March 25th, 1420. Zisca took Ausch or 
Aussig by a night assault, and when it was burned not long after, removed the 
population to Hradisch near Tabor. The two were ultimately made into one 
fortified place of great strength, and placed under command of Procopius, Zisca's 
ablest lieutenant. In Prague the contending parties drew off from one another. 
The Germans and others who adhered to the pope and the emperor took refuge 
in the castle and the Vissehrad. Calixtines and Taborites, forgetting their dis- 
sentions for the moment, united against the common foe. Prague was composed 
of two cities, the Old and the New. Each was put in charge of four captains, 
with forty inferior officers, ready to act in any emergency. 

These precautions were taken none too soon. The treasures of the Church 
and of the empire had been spent for the holy work of extirpating heresy, and 
a terrible army of a hundred and fifty thousand men, gathered from every part 
of Europe, was on its way to crush Bohemia. An advance guard was already in 
the country, and the point of attack was Tabor. The lord of Rosenberg, an 
apostate from the cause of reform, who had forbidden the use of the cup on his 
estates, offered his services, and was given command of this expedition. Zisca 
had been called to Prague and was helping the citizens in besieging the 
Vissehrad, whose garrison, half starved, had agreed to surrender, if not relieved 
in fifteen days, when this news arrived. On June 25th he sent three hundred 
and fifty horsemen under Nicholas of Hussinecz, in whose village Huss was 
born, and who had been a candidate for the throne at Wenzel's death. They 
arrived in good time. The royal troops were said to outnumber the defenders 
twenty to one, but the Taborites were strong in their faith. On June 30th, the 
terrible peasants came down with their flails and pikes from the rocks of Tabor, 
while Nicholas and his cavalry struck the enemy in flank. Demoralized 
by this shock, they fled, and in the pursuit many were captured or slain. A 
vast quantity of spoil was taken; not only provisions and munitions of war, 
but gold and silver plate, rich cloths, jewels, and articles of luxury. It was 
the custom of past ages for princes and commanders to display their wealth, and 
in every persecuting war the hardy defenders of liberty, from Judas Maccabeus 



280 THE STORY OP OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

to the seventeenth century, made profit of belongings which their assailants 
lad not sense enough to leave at home. This was about the only material 
advantage which came of these contests, and the only method by which property 
was distributed in a manner tending at all to equalize possessions. 

The taking of Hradish, a walled town of some importance, occurred a few 
days before this victory : it was accomplished by a Hussite preacher and some 
colliers and farmers. An army of ten thousand men tried to retake it, but in 
vain. A little later four thousand imperial cavalry were routed at Voticz, between 
Tabor and Prague. 



A CRUSADE. 



Meantime Sigismund was advancing on Prague, and robbing such monas- 
teries as were left to replenish his treasury. Between the two armies the rural 
parts, and often the cities too, suffered heavily. Cruelties were abundant on 
both sides, and each act of violence called forth others in retaliation. Rosenberg, 
raging at his defeat, hunted down his peasants and filled his dungeons with 
captives ; in return, their friends ravaged his estates. The pits about Cuttern- 
berg, where the German miners worked and slaughtered, reeked with the stench 
of corpses. The emperor in his march threw confessors into the Elbe, and 
Hinko Krussina with his Horebites, most ferocious among the devotees of reform, 
"breathed vengeance against all priests and monks, and seemed to find no satis- 
faction equal to that of torturing, mangling, insulting, and murdering them." 
These dangereous fanatics were now summoned to Prague, and their leader was 
made one of its chief defenders. 

Early in the century, D'Ailly, one of the most eminent of the cardinals, 
bad longed for a crusade, as a means to get rid of some of the ruffians who 
infested France, Italy, and every other western country. The body politic, he 
said, was diseased, and needed to lose a good deal of blood. He now had his 
wish. The army contained much of the worst material in Europe. If "catholic" 
meant universal, it was more catholic than the council of Constance. Beneath 
the princes and generals was a mass of men of the sort since considered chiefly 
useful as "food for powder." Thousands of them helped to fertilize the fields 
of Bohemia ; but they did an immense amount of damage before returning to 
their native dust. Not an unfair sample of them, perhaps, was that captain 
who in December, 1420, broke into the church of Kerczin during service, mas- 
sacred part of the congregation, took the chalice full of wine from the altar, 
drank it to his horse's health, and gave him some of the consecrated fluid, saying 
that the horse too had become an Utraquist. 



SIEGE OF PRAGUE. 



On the last day of June the emperor reached Prague, where the castle was 
still held by his officers, and relieved the Vissehrad. He tried to storm the city 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



281 



walls, but every attack was repulsed. Before lie could occupy the Gallows Hill, 
which overlooked the town, it was seized and fortified by Zisca. On July 14th, 
it was assaulted in great force, nearly taken, and saved in a singular way. 
While the people of Prague gazed in terror on the danger of their friends and 
implored help from heaven, a minister suddenly issued from the city gate, 
bearing the consecrated elements, and followed by fifty women and a crowd of 




A GROUP OF MENDICANT FRIARS. 



peasants with their flails. The imperial troops, astonished, and thinking this a 
sally in full force, drew back. Zisca's men, encouraged by the spectacle, rushed 
from their entrenchments, driving all before them, and hurled the enemy down 
the rocks. Several hundred were slain, and many prisoners taken. The emperor, 



282 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

from a point of vantage, witnessed the failure of his effort, and drew his arni3 
back to camp. The victors knelt upon the field and sang : joyful processions 
went through the streets, giving thanks for a success which seemed achieved bv 
miracle. 

The invaders were enraged at their defeat, and still more at the burning of 
their tents five days later — perhaps an accident, but credited to the Hussites. 
The name of Bohemian became a reproach, though many of that nation were in 
their army. They burned every one who fell into their hands, regardless of his 
creed. In revenge the Taborites took sixteen prisoners from the town-house, led 
them outside the walls, put fifteen of them in hogsheads, and applied the torch 
in sight of the royal army. The one spared was a monk, who promised to 
celebrate the communion in both kinds — a promise he was likely to keep no> 
longer than his life depended upon it. 

Both hosts were now torn by intestine feuds. In the camp Germans an<? 
Bohemians were continually quarreling : the former, unable to do anything 
against the city, roved about the neighborhood, burning houses, barns, furniture, 
men, women, and children, with indiscriminate zeal. Within the walls of Prague 
the Taborites had become a nuisance to the more sober citizens. Invaluable as 
fighters, they were intolerable as guests. Abhorring all the pomp of worship 
which had prevailed but a few years before — liturgies, ceremonies, decorations — 
they were not willing that their allies should think or act differently. A mob 
of both sexes, led by the minister Corando, made their way into St. Michael's 
church and tore up the seats, pretending that these were wanted to strengthen 
Zisca's fortifications on the Gallows Hill. Further outrages of the kind were 
probably intended. 

The Calixtines or moderates had no taste for such proceedings. Their party 
included most of the barons, who were tired of seeing their estates ravaged. 
These now made overtures for peace, on the basis of their four essential prin- 
ciples : the full and free preaching of the gospel throughout the kingdom ; com- 
munion in both kinds ; the exclusion of the clergy from civil posts and large 
possessions ; and the strict repression and punishment of gross and public sins, 
alike in clergy and laity. As these were the very' points at issue, Sigismund, . 
backed or impelled by the pope's legate, refused to permit their discussion. To> 
define their position, the citizens set forth those "four articles" in a long and 
formal document, justifying each with arguments and Biblical quotations, and 
averring their intention to maintain them with all their power and to stand by 
them in life and death. The Taborites presently drew up twelve rival articles, 
insisting that proved enemies of God's Truth should be driven from Prague and 
no favor shown them ; also that "monasteries be broken up and destroyed, as well 
as unnecessary churches and altars with their images, robes, gold and silver chal- 
ices, and every antichristian abomination savoring of idolatry or simony." The 




PREACHING THE CRUSADE. 



283 



284 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



New City, where this party had the majority, accepted these articles; but Old 
Prague, less foud of destruction, hesitated. To illustrate the disputed doctrine, 
the Taborites sacked another monastery and burned the royal cloisters. Having 
found in the vaults more wine than they were accustomed to, some of them 
attacked the Vissehrad, and were repulsed with loss. Then they left the city with 
Zisca. 

Their departure could not have been borne, and would not have been thought 
-of, if the enemy had still been near. But on July 28th Sigismund, after having 
himself crowned in the castle as King of Bohemia — an empty and useless ceremony 
— had withdrawn with his army, ravaging as he went. We are only anticipating 
a little in copying from Mr. Gillett's "Life and Times of Huss" this picture of 
the wretched kingdom : 

"Here we shall find the tombs of kings profaned, their dust no longer pro- 
tected by coffins, the golden plates of which could pay the wages of a ruffian 
soldiery ; there the fragments of marble altars, and pavements on which the 
knees of devout pilgrims had rested, are used to charge the catapults of the 
invading host. The carcasses of the slain had poisoned the air, till pestilence 
helps famine to do its work. Indiscriminate massacre involves the innocent and 
the guilty, friend and foe, in one common doom. Retaliation and vengeance, 
sometimes though rarely conducted under legal forms, supply each party with 
its hosts of martyrs. Dreadful traditions have perpetuated the memory of as 
many frightful scenes. Near Toplitz, it was said, might be seen a pear tree, 
which blossomed every year and never yielded fruit — a tree accursed from the 
streams of blood that have saturated its roots. At Commotau, near a church 
where thousand of victims perished, it was asserted that the soil was formed of 
the remains of bones, and that at whatever depth search was made, nothing 
could be found but human teeth." 










CHAPTER XIX. 

ZISCA OF THE CUP. 




N leaving: Prague August 22a, 1420, Zisca had two objects in- 
view ; to avoid a breach with the Calixtines, and 
keep his forces occupied in suppressing the 
perial party throughout the kingdom. Reso- 
lute and ruthless, he had no pity for the enemies 
:>f his cause, and they were unable to resist or 
:o escape him. At Kniczan, a league from the 
capital, he burned the church and seven 
priests. He meant to spare Prachatitz, where 
he had studied in youth, but it refused to open 
its gates at his summons, and shared the com- 
mon fate of towns taken by assault. Over 
eighty were burned, and two hundred and 
thirty slain in the streets. The strange con- 
fusion of mediaeval ideas was shown in his 
reply to appeals for mercy: "We must fulfil the law of the Lord Christ in your 
blood." Like some of the Puritans in later ages, he seemed to have studied the 
Old rather than the New Testament, and to imagine that the Prince of Peace had 
come into the world frowning and sword in hand. 

Sigismund had raised a new army, and came back to Prague just in time to- 
see the Vissehrad, which he had saved a few months before, surrendered to the 
besiegers. He offered battle, and was beaten by Krussina and the Horebites — 
for Zisca was still absent. Seeing his vanguard in flight from the rustic weapons, 
he cried, "I want to come to blows with those flail-bearers." "Sire," said a noble 
of Moravia, "I fear we shall all perish; those iron flails are very dangerous."' 
"Oh, you Moravians !" the tactless monarch answered, "I know you ; you are 
afraid!" Stung by the taunt, the Moravians dismounted and rushed upon the 
foe, only to fall as the Austrian barons had fallen before the Swiss burghers 
thirty-four years earlier at Sempach. Thousands were left on the field, and the 
emperor again retreated, having gained nothing and lost a large portion of his 
best troops. 

The Taborites, if they could not have a republic, favored an elective king. 
Seeing that Sigismund could not be brought to their terms, the Calixtines now 
came over to this project. The union of the two factions was hindered by a con- 
troversy as to whether the ministers should wear their robes when celebrating the. 

(285) 



286 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

communion, till Jacobel, one of their leading ministers, suggested that this was 
not a vital matter. Nicholas of Hussinecz, seeing his claims set aside, swore 
never to enter Prague again, and rode off in anger. His horse fell, he was car- 
ried back to die, and his troops joined Zisca. The crown was offered to the king 
of Poland, who refused it. Bohemia was practically without a head, and Zisca 
made life hard for those who still adhered to Sigismund. He was now strong 
enough to garrison the places that fell into his hands, instead of destroying them. 
He took and fortified two cloisters. He surprised Bohuslaus, one of the emperor's 
generals, in the fortress of Kastirow, and let his prisoner go. Perhaps in disgust 
at this leniency, some of his soldiers left him, and set up an army of their own, 
but were soon routed by the enemy. This lesson was not wasted; Zisca came to 
be recognized as the national chieftain, and his forces grew larger day by day. 
The emperor ventured on a third invasion, and began to besiege Kladrub, one of 
the new cloister-forts; but on Zisca's approach a panic seized his troops, and he 
made haste to get out of his nominal kingdom, after a third disgraceful failure 
within one year. 

Though Zisca's best fighters were Taborites, he himself was a Calixtine thus 
far. He knew how to use the fanaticism of his followers, without sharing it ; his 
own fanaticism, if he had any, was that of a patriot and a soldier. It was part of 
his policy, as stimulating the enthusiasm of his men, to have in the front a priest 
with cup in hand. He allowed so-called prophets to march with his troops, but 
smiled at their vagaries — as when they forbade the army to encamp in a certain 
field, predicting that fire would fall from heaven there next day, and rain came 
instead. But his toleration did not extend to Martin Loqui, who held some extrav- 
agant and apparently dangerous notions. This man was driven from Tabor, 
and put to death with some of his followers. 

THE LEAGUE AND REGENCY. 

As the year 142 1 advanced, most of the Bohemian cities entered into a league 
with Prague, on the basis of the four Calixtine articles. This alliance the general 
vigorously furthered, and even enforced under the heaviest penalties. Jaromirtz, 
which would not join, was sacked, and many of its people drowned or burned, 
among them twenty-three priests, who would not agree to use the cup. At L,eit- 
moritz Zisca had the mortification to fail both in persuasion and in attack, and 
then to see the city open its gates to a force from Prague, and swear cheerfully 
to the four articles. But this was a most unusual case, and he consoled his 
wounded vanity by taking the castle at Prague after a two weeks' siege. Its 
governor, Czenko, now openly joined the Calixtines. Thus fell the last rem- 
^nant of royal authority in the capital. 

In July 142 1 a convention of the states, with some deputies from Moravia, 
met at Czaslau, appointed a regency of twenty, and adopted the four articles. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



287 



The barons and some others wished to add two more, excluding Sigismund for- 
ever from the throne, and putting the kingdom into commission. In answer to 
ambassadors who tried to induce them to accept their lawful king, they replied 
with a document in the spirit of Magna Charta and of modern liberty. The 
emperor, they claimed with entire truth, had been an accomplice in the death of 
Huss and the 
tyrannical acts 
of the council of 
Constance. He 
had published 
the crusade and 
tried to carry it 
out, defaming 
and invading the 
kingdom. He 
bad burned one 
of their brethren 
(Krasa) at Bres- 
lau, and ex- 
ecuted many 
more. His army 
bad devastated 
their fields, de- 
stroyed their 
castles and vil- 
lages, massacred 
their people, and 
balf ruined the 
country, regard- 
less of its rights 
and liberties. 
Other charges 
. they brought, 
probably all well 
founded. It is 
easy to heap up 

. ... PEASANT, WITH HER WATER JUG. 

counts m the in- 
dictment against a tyrant ; and Sigismund had been foolish enough to proceed 
as if he had to deal with slaves instead of men of spirit. 

An attack from Silesia was met, just after the convention, by Czenko and 
Krussina, former enemies, now allies: the invaders withdrew in haste. Zisca 





SIGISMUND'S ARMY ON THE WAY TO PRAGUE. 



288 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 289 

was at this time disabled by the loss of his remaining eye, which was struck by 
an arrow at the siege of Raby. He went to Prague in hope of regaining his 
sight, but in vain. When friends wished him to stay in the city, his answer was 
characteristic of the man: "Let me go; I have blood yet to shed." And so he 
had. His terrible career was by no means over. The army sent for him ; his 
men would follow no other leader. His endurance was iron, his powers as unfail- 
ing as his will. Some of his chief campaigns and battles were conducted after 
he became totally blind. 

MORE INVASIONS. 

And he was needed. Sigismund had prepared for a new invasion on a still 
larger scale, and from both sides of Bohemia at once. Had he possessed fair 
military talent, he might have crushed the rebellion even now. But his plan 
failed through his own delay. A German army, said to reach the huge number 
of two hundred thousand, entered from the west in August and began to besiege 
a town ; but, meeting opposition and hearing nothing from their employer, they 
became discouraged and withdrew. It was the end of the year before the em- , 
peror made his appearance on the eastern frontier, and began his destructive march 
toward Prague. 

Zisca had been putting down the imperialists, who were always ready to raise 
their heads when a royal army approached. He was besieging Pilsen, but had 
to retreat in haste. From Prague he marched to Cuttemberg, of ill repute in the 
past from the murders of Hussites. The city now belonged to the league, and 
of course received him. But its people, either Calixtines or Catholics, were dis- 
gusted by what seemed to them the rude and vulgar freedom of the Taborite 
worship. Accustomed to the stately ceremonial of the mass, they were amazed 
to see the newly arrived soldiers and their chaplains, covered with the dust of travel, 
jump from their horses, rush into the church, receive the communion in bits 
of ordinary bread and a tin or wooden cup, and with the briefest possible form 
of service. Such allies were not at all to their taste, and when Zisca was gone 
they received the emperor. He rewarded them, a little later, by burning their 
town to the ground — an example easily and freely used against him. 

The blind general was now in straits. Some of his reinforcements from 
Prague left him ; he encamped on a hill, and was presently surrounded ; but in 
the night he cut his way through the emperor's camp, with very little loss. 
Sigismund, after the aimless and disconnected fashion of all his campaigns, had 
now enough of it, and retreated into Moravia. Zisca pursued, and on January 
9th, 1422, defeated him at Deutschbrod, after a three hours' battle. The imperial 
troops had to make their way across a bridge so narrow as to impede their prog- 
ress. Seeing this, the cavalry, under an Italian general, ventured on the frozen 
river ; the ice broke, and near fifteen thousand were drowned. Seven standards, 




AFTER THE BATTLE OF DEUTSCHBROD. 



290 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 291 

■five hundred baggage-wagons, and other spoils, fell into the hands of the victors. 
.Zisca, who was never greedy of gain for himself, divided the booty among his men. 
This event practically gave a deathblow to the emperor's pretensions in 
Bohemia. But he had one remaining partisan, " Iron John," now the nominal 
.archbishop of Prague. This fighting prelate, who fiercely hated reform and 
reformers, had an army and a stronghold near Broda. Zisca now turned upon 
him and broke his force to pieces. The blind conqueror, "assuming the authority 
which his victories assured him, seated upon the ruins of the fortress and under 
the captured standards, knighted the bravest of his soldiers, and distributed 
.among them an immense booty." 

RIOTS IN PRAGUE. 

Delivered from her former tyrants and foreign enemies, Bohemia now 
became a prey to internal feuds. It is melancholy to see the brave defenders of 
liberty turning their counsels and their arms against each other, and to record 
that this civil strife, in its extremest form, was begun by the hitherto moderate 
■Calixtines. The governor and council of the Old Town of Prague, on March 
<9th, 1422, summoned John the Premonstrant, a noted preacher, and nine (or, as 
Peschech says, twelve) others to appear before them. Coming freely, these men 
were accused of sedition, interference with the authorities, or other irregular acts, 
hastily tried, and at once privately beheaded. This outrage, more fitting in 
popes, kings, and inquisitors than in the elected magistrates of a free city, justly 
enraged the Taborites. "When the blood was seen flowing from the hall, it 
•occasioned a great uproar : the people ran together, broke open the doors, and 
sought the bodies. One found the head of John, and held it up in view of the 
people surrounding the town-hall, which caused an indescribable wailing. A 
minister laid the head upon a dish, carried it through the city, and called on all 
he met for vengeance. The bodies were carried into a church, and buried with 
great lamentation. The minister, who addressed the people from Acts viii. 2, 
presenting the head of John, conjured them to bear in mind what they had 
learned from that faithful teacher, and to believe none who should teach other- 
wise, though an angel from heaven." 

The vengeance of the crowd was swift and destructive. They killed the 
magistrates who had ordered the execution, sacked their houses, destroyed the 
town records, and plundered the University library. It is in the nature of a 
mob to do such deeds ; the wonder is that sober senators should have incited 
them by similar violence. But there was truth in the Taborite complaint that 
the Calixtines had greatly degenerated. Some of them, except in the matter of 
the cup, were but little removed from the old views ; and many of the barons 
were so unwise as to fancy that Sigismund had by this time learned enough to 
be trusted with his inherited power. As may be seen elsewhere in this history, 
such reactions have attended and retarded the progress of every national reform. 



292 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



CIVIL WAR. 



Bohemian politics at this juncture were very complicated. The crown had 
"been declined by the king of Poland and the grand duke of Lithuania ; but the 
latter had recommended a relative. This prince, Corybut, embraced the Calix- 
tine cause, spent some time in Prague, and might have been crowned but that 
Sigismund had in 1420 prudently carried off the crown and other royal belong- 
ings. At a diet held in November, 142 1, Zisca had vainly endeavored to keep 
peace between the parties; but many, who were already jealous of his power, 
took offense at his tone, and made their hostility too obvious to be forgiven. 




VIEW OF ROME. 



Personal resentment now supported his statesman's sense of what was necessary 
for the country: seeing no middle way open, and knowing that he could trust 
nobody but the soldiers, he became a Taborite and made war on the Calixtines. 
The party to which he had nominally belonged till now were foolish enough to 
think they could do without Zisca. The nobles gathered an army under Czenko, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



293 



went forth to meet their old comrade, and were soundly thrashed. Kozagedy 
and other places were stormed and destroyed. Koniggratz was taken, and a 
second force, under Borzek, once governor of Prague, beaten with heavy loss. 
Wearied with incessant labors and night marches, the troops mutinied. "We 
are not blind like Zisca," they complained: "we cannot fight in the dark." 
But he soon brought them to order. "This is your affair," he said. "What do 
I get by it? I could make peace for myself, if I chose. Where are we now? " 




uny 



WAYSIDE PREACHING IN THE TIME OF HUSS. 

Between certain hills, they told him. " Good ; go and 
light up the next village, that we may see our way." 
By the flames they pursued their conquering and de- 
vastating march. 

One war at a time was not enough for him. Procopius, his lieutenant, had 
taken certain cities in Moravia. Encouraged by the civil strife in Bohemia, 
Sigismund's nephew, the Archduke Albert, was getting these back. Zisca 
<sve-nt after him and chased him into Austria, to the very bank of the Danube. 



294 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Returning at the end of the year, he overthrew a force from Prague, and took several! 
towns and castles. By the summer his army was so reduced that he was obliged 
for a time to retreat before the troops of Czenko and Corybut ; at length, by care- 
ful strategy, he got them where he wanted, and overcame them. 

ZISCA BEFORE PRAGUE. 

Prague was now almost helpless before him, for he had destroyed or scattered' 
all the forces it could raise. On September nth, 1423, he reached its gates; they 
were closed and barred. His men shrank from storming the walls they had so 
often defended. Again he had recourse to the rough eloquence of the camp- 
Mounting on a cask, so that all might see as well as hear, he spoke thus : 

" Comrades, why do you murmur ? By me you have gained so many vic- 
tories ; by me you have won fame and wealth. And yet, for you I have lost my 
sight, for you I dwell in darkness. What is my reward for all my labors ? 
Nothing but a name. It is not my own interest that brings me here. Does^ 
Prague thirst for the blood of a blind old man ? It dreads your fearless hearts, your 
invincible arms. When they have taken us in their nets, they will lay snares for 
you, and what then will be your fate ? Therefore let us take Prague, and cruslt 
this sedition before Sigismund learns of it. A few, thoroughly united, will do- 
more against him than a multitude divided. It is in your interest I am acting. 
Now make your choice. Will you have peace ? Take care that it does not cover 
some ambush. Will you have war ? Here am I." 

The soldiers yielded to these persuasions, and the city was invested. But 
it was not stormed. Zisca delayed the attack, sharing, as we may believe, the 
scruples of his men, and hoping that terror would remove the need of violence.- 
Nor was he mistaken. A deputation came from the city, headed by John of Ro- 
kyzan, a preacher of great eminence. A treaty of peace was signed, and an altar 
of stones raised as a monument. Zisca entered Prague in peaceful triumph, and 
was received for what he was, the greatest man in the kingdom. 

Another and crowning honor was reserved for him. The emperor actually 
proposed that Zisca should govern Bohemia as his nominal officer, retaining all 
the real power. For himself, he said, it would be enough if he were merely pro- 
claimed king. 

Sigismund's promises were worth very little ; but this one may have been 
sincere, since he saw he could get nothing as matters stood, and vanity grasps, 
at an empty title. Yet a man of honor could hardly have stooped so low. ^Eneas 
Sylvius says justly, from his point of view, that the proceeding was disgraceful. 
That the first man in Christendom should offer such terms to one " hardly noble 
by birth, old, blind, a sacrilegious heretic, an audacious rebel " — propose to give- 
him the rule over the kingdom and its armies, with a vast revenue — this was. 
sufficiently degrading. Yet it was in keeping with the character of him who* 




S9S 



296 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



over his own safe-conduct gave Huss to the flames, and turned his subjects into 
foes by showing himself their bitter enem}^. 



DEATH OF ZISCA. 

What the great captain thought of this strange proposal we do not know. 
It may not have seemed so strange to him. In those days, as from the begin- 
ning of time, men rose by the sword, and he had risen so high as to deserve any 
fortune. He could have governed Bohemia — none else so well, for no other had 
gained such fame, or shown ability to be compared to his, But it was not to be. 
While besieging a town on the eastern frontier, he died of the plague, October 
nth, 1424. In his last illness — so goes the famous tradition — he ordered his 
carcass to be thrown out like those of his victims, and his skin made into a 
drum and carried before his armies, that their enemies might still tremble 
before the name of Zisca. 

The grim command was not obeyed. He was buried in the cathedral at 
Czaslau, and his mace hung near his tomb. Three epitaphs are said to have 
marked the spot. The first is so pretentious that we may trust it was not of 
his suggesting : " Here lies John Zisca, inferior to no other general in mil- 
itary science, the vigorous punisher of the pride and avarice of the priesthood, 
and the zealous defender of his country. What the blind Appius Claudius did 
for the Romans by his counsel, and Curius Camillus by his prowess, I accom- 
plished for the Bohemians. I never failed Fortune, nor she me ; and though 
blind, I always saw what ought to be done. I fought eleven times with stand- 
ards displayed, and I always conquered. Without ceasing, I was seen defend- 
ing the cause of the poor and oppressed against sensual and bloated priests ; 
and therefore did God sustain me. If their hatred did not hinder, I should 
be reckoned among the most illustrious ; and yet, in spite of the pope, my bones 
repose in this holy place." 

This certainly agrees well with what we know of Zisca' s character; and 
it is noteworthy that the tone is much more pagan than Christian. The second 
is much milder: "Here rests John Zisca, the leader of oppressed freedom in 
and for the name of God." But the third is one of the most striking epitaphs 
ever written. "Huss, here reposes John Zisca, thy avenger; and the emperor 
has quailed before him." It was true : if the shade of the meek and forgiving 
martyr of Constance could be supposed to desire earthly requital of his wrongs, 
he had been terribly avenged. 





^^^^X^Jul^'Jj^£^/j^ r 




CHAPTER XX. 



CRUSADES AND COUNCILS. 



hcT HE deatli of Zisca, though it deeply afflicted his 
followers — some of whom took the name of 
Orphans — was not fatal to the cause he had 
served so well. The terror of his name, the 
prestige of his victories, and the discipline 
he had given to his armies, remained ; the 
Bohemians were yet to show themselves, on 
a more extensive scale than formerly, the 
best fighters in Europe, and to give their 
neighbors a taste of what those neighbors 
had striven to inflict on them. 

Procopius, who had been Zisca's right- 
hand man, now came to the front. He was 
of good birth and education, had been a 
monk, and was still something of a theologian. 
That warlike age saw no hopeless gulf between the gown and the sword, 
and no striking incongruity in exchanging one for the other ; many, in fact, 
like "Iron John," exercised both professions at the same time, and would 
hurry from camp to altar, or from pulpit to battle-field. Procopius had proved, 
and was y&t to show, in many a fray, that he was no unworthy pupil of his 
heroic master. He was a man of affairs as well as a man of war, and for peace 
if it could be had with honor ; but he knew that the safety of Bohemian faith 
and freedom lay in the warrior's strong right hand. 

He was soon needed. The council of Sienna, echoing the thunders of Con- 
stance, had at the end of 1424 put forth savage decrees against the disciples of 
Wiclif and Huss, and the pope soon proclaimed a new crusade. After four 
years of exemption from foreign foes, the kingdom was again invaded. The 
Hussites were besieging Aussig : a hundred thousand imperial soldiers endeav- 
ored to relieve it, and were defeated on June 15th, 1426, with the loss of full 
•one-tenth their force. Nothing more was attempted till the next year, when the 
diet of Frankfort determined to send out four armies, under the command of 
an English cardinal, and so piously conducted that each man was required to 

(297) 



the: story of our Christianity. 



confess and hear mass every week. The first instalment of these well-regulated, 
troops sat down before Miess, on the Bavarian frontier. The Hussites marched 
in haste to relieve the town. At sight of them the invaders broke ranks and 
ran : the Horebites sprang in with their flails, covered the ground with corpses r 
and proceeded to divide the spoil. As several times before, the chief material- 
result of this irruption was to bring in wealth from abroad, and generously leave 

it for those who pos- 
sessed little or none. 

Early in 1428'- 
an attempt was made 
to reconcile the vari- 
ous factions. It came 
to nothing, for the 
Calixtines held to' 
seven sacraments 
and an elaborate 
ritual, while the Ta- 
borites were all for 
simplicity. 

The Orphans,, 
lacking occupation at 




home, now took to- 
ravaging Silesia,,, 
which is on the east. 
Undaunted by one 
or two reverses, they 
returned with a larger 
force, defeated the 
natives in a pitched 
battle, and wasted, 
the whole province. 
Meantime Procopius 
took Lichtenburg 
and Bechin, and. 
harried Austria. 

Sigismund now 
made another effort^, 
in a peaceful way. He urged that Bohemia had no settled government, whicL 
was true, and that he was its lawful king, whom his subjects ought to accept. 
They replied, what was equally true, that by his whole course, beginning with 
his treatment of Huss, he had forfeited any rights over them, and given them. 



PROCOPIUS, THE GREAT HUSSITE GENERAL. 




CRUSADERS ON THE WAY TO BOHEMIA. 



299 



.300 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

occasion to regard him only as a public enemy. But Procopius, with an eye 
to possibilities, received the ambassadors, procured from them a safe-conduct, and 
-visited the emperor. If he proposed to take the government on the terms on 
which it had been offered to Zisca, he was disappointed, for the two came to no 
agreement. But not long after this, he proposed to receive Sigismund on the 
basis of the Calixtine articles — chiefly, of course, the communion in both kinds. 
The terms were impossible, and the Orphans exclaimed that a free people needed 
no king. 

But the emperor's rejection of the proposed conditions had the effect of 
partially reconciling the contending parties at home. Such a reconciliation was 
sorely needed, There had been fearful riots in Prague, and on one day, January 
30th, 1429, a bloody conflict between the Old and New towns, Calixtines and 
Taborites. Procopius arranged a peace, with a heavy money penalty to be paid 
by whoever should break it. He was now elected general-in-chief, which gave the 
distracted country a nearer approach to a central government than it had had 
for some years. Aware that the troops, now united, must be kept employed, he 
■wisely concluded that foreign fields were the best for their activit}'. 

" THE OBSEQUIES OF HUSS." 

Many grudges were yet to be paid off to the neighboring kingdoms and 
provinces, which had furnished troops for the armies that had so often invaded 
Bohemia in the interest of emperor and pope. The day of peace and comparative 
harmony at home was well adapted to the settling of these old scores, and they 
were now settled with interest. In the autumn of 1429 Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, 
. and Brandenburg might have fancied that Zisca had risen from his grave and set 
out upon his travels. The smoke of churches, convents, and towns filled the air, 
and the streets were soaked with blood. Among the ruins the avengers shouted, 
" Behold the funeral ceremonies of John Huss ! " 

The conquerors came home for the winter, bearing various pleasant names, 
as Collectors, Little Cousins, and Wolf-bands. In the spring they started out 
again, a formidable force of 30,000 infantry, 20,000 horse, and 3,000 chariots. 
On the way to Dresden they sacked or burned over a hundred towns. The larger 
cities, as Nuremberg and Bamberg, had to purchase exemption from pillage with 
heavy bags of gold. The German princes, differing among themselves, could 
agree on no measures for the common defense. 

But the pope was not idle. He wrote to the King of Poland to assure him 
that he could do " nothing more acceptable to God, more useful to the world, or 
more for his own fame, than to turn all his thoughts and all his strength to the 
-extirpation of this new religion." The Polish king did not dispute the point, 
hut he had other business just then. After delays, a diet held at Nuremberg 
determined to make an effort. Cardinal Caasarini, the papal legate, brought a 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



30 r 



bill ordering a new crusade, and took pains to beat up recruits for the holy 
league, as he called it. One of his letters may serve as a specimen of many such : 
"Alas, the abominable heresy of the Wiclifites and Hussites exceeds to-day 
all those of preceding ages. It has inspired them to a fierce obstancy, so that, 
like the adder, they shut their ears to the voice and doctrine of their mother the 




SOLDIERS SEARCHING -FOR BOHEMIAN PROTESTANTS. 

Church, regardless of all the methods she 
takes to bring them back to reason. Not 
content with their poisonous dogmas and 
their blasphemies, they have despoiled all 
humanity and all piety, and become like 
ferocious beasts, to be satisfied only with 
the blood of Catholics." No doubt it seemed 

to the pope, the emperor, and their party very strange and very hard that the 

weapons which they had so freely employed should be turned against them. 

To short-sighted self-interest it is a bad argument which will work both ways. 

It is always easy to see the wickedness of persecution when we are the 

victims. 



;302 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

While the army was preparing, Sigismund again sent ambassadors to 
-invite his rebellious subjects to receive their king. The parties were disputing 
.as usual ; strange to say, only the Orphans saw the insincerity and uselessness 
.-■of these proposals. The leaders, including Procopius, gave them serious con- 
sideration, and actually sent four deputies to confer with the emperor. After 
two weeks or more, these deputies found out that he was merely playing with 
thern and gaining time ; then they spoke out their minds, returned to Prague, 
.and gave the alarm. Preparations were made in haste, and the forces which 
were ravaging abroad were called home for national defense. The factions 
joined hands like brothers, and fifty thousand infantry, seven thousand horse, 
and thirty-six hundred chariots were ready before they were needed. 

After the usual delays the crusade was getting ready too ; but the cardinal 
legate, who was to march with it, wished first to try the effect of his talents as a 
letter-writer. He now employed a style quite different from that of the docu- 
ment quoted above. His epistle to those whom he had denounced so fiercely a 
year before "overflowed with tenderness and anxiety for their spiritual welfare. 
He vaunted the tender mercies of the Church, and protested that the aim of the 
rinvaders was kind and Christian : if the Bohemians would only submit and 
return, to the unity of the Church, they should be left entirely unharmed. In 
a tone of earnest entreaty, as if any act of violence or cruelty was most remote 
from his thought, he urged and besought them to give up their Protestantism 
.and accept the charity which the Church was ready to bestow." 

THE LAST CRUSADE. 

But the Bohemians were not simple enough to be thus taken in. In a 
•spirited reply, they laid down the four Calixtine articles as the only possible 
l)asis of agreement ; intimated that they understood the artifices of their foes ; 
and declared that they would maintain their rights by the strong hand. Its clos- 
ing sentence was a taunt, repudiating with contempt the pious professions of the 
cardinal, and placing their cause on far higher ground than his: "Your trust 
is in an arm of flesh ; ours is in the God of battles." Besides this lofty reliance, 
they had the better soldiers, and by far the best generals. 

The crusade started with great ceremonies in August, 1431, under command 
of the Elector of Brandenburg. A minor force was to operate from the east; 
eighty thousand infantry, half as many horsemen, and a formidable artillery, 
entered the western part of Bohemia. Procopius had taken pains to delude them 
with false reports of dissensions and elements of weakness among his men, and 
they were marching confidently through a forest near Tansch, close to the Bava- 
rian border, when they heard that the whole Hussite army was at hand. Not 
waiting for its attack, they turned about and ran — electors, archdukes, officers, 
and privates. The legate seems to have been the only man among them with. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



303 



.any qualities of a leader : he tried to rally the fugitives, but they would stay 
■only for a sight of their dreaded foes. They left everything which could be 
dropped. There was no battle, only pursuit, slaughter, and the gathering of a 
rich spoil. The men of Brandenburg had barely afforded the time to tear up 
their standards before they fled. All the heavy artillery, with eight thousand 
wagons full of military stores and the strong chest of the army, remained to 
enrich the defenders of Bohemia. The cardinal, who stayed longer than most 
of the laymen, left his red hat, his robes 
and cross, and even the pope's bull or- 
dering the crusade. The last was long 
kept as a trophy. 

Thus ended for that generation the 
efforts to suppress heresy in Bohemia by 
force of arms : what was the use of send- 
ing out armies which would not stand and 
fight ? The German nobles cast the blame 
on the princes : the knights, smarting 
under their disgrace, " vowed to restore 
the honor of the empire and to march 
against the Hussites, on condition that no 
prince was permitted to join their ranks." 
But the historian Wenzel ascribes the 
night chiefly to "the unwillingness of 
the common soldiers to serve against the 
Hussites, whose cause they thought both 
glorious and just." 

The legate, who had learned, by sharp 
experience, how formidable were these 
Bohemians, now changed his measures, 
and invited them to appear at the coming 
council of Basle. The council itself, as- 
sembling at the end of the year, offered 
full and free discussion of the points in 
dispute, with liberty of their own worship 
in their quarters, and even promised that 
no sermons against their four articles 
should be permitted while they were in 
guaranteed by a safe-conduct, which was 




HUSSITE SHIELD. 



the 



more was 
assurances that any 



city. All this and 
now sent with 

attempt to violate it should be severely punished, and that they would be escorted 
back safely to their own frontier. But they remembered the fate of Huss, and 
were in no hurry to accept the invitation. 










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304 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 305 

There was general dissatisfaction iu German}'. The great and famous 
council of Constance, which was called to reform the Church, had failed to 
accomplish its purpose, beyond burning Huss and Jerome and putting down the 
rival popes. The unwearied legate warned the new pope, Eugenius IV., that 
the corruptions of the clergy "had irritated the laity beyond measure." If 
something were not done to suppress these evils, he wrote, " men will say that 
we are making a mock of God and man ; and as the hope of reform vanishes, 
others will persecute us as the Hussites have done." The new pope, who was 
no reformer, wished to dissolve the council of Basle, and convoke it aga ; n in some 
Italian city ; but the council refused to move. 

THE HUSSITES AT BASLE. 

Its first letters the Bohemians did not deign to answer. Anxious inquiries 
followed, and proposals for a conference at Egra, which they would not attend. 
They demanded hostages of noble birth ; they distrusted the pledges of the 
princes in support of the safe-conducts. At length their suspicions were set at 
rest, and in January, 1433, confident in their strength, they appeared at Basle. It 
was a noble deputation, three hundred strong, the most eminent men of the king- 
dom, w T ith Procopius at their head. They came not as Huss had come, alone 
and meek among his foes, but with heads erect and haughty mien, not to plead, 
but to assert their cause. They, his successors and spiritual heirs, had been 
eagerly urged to attend on equal terms in the interest of peace. It was Bohemia's 
hour of triumph, even more than when the chivalry of Europe, the hosts of 
emperor and pope, had fled before the Hussite flails; Strong was the desire to 
see them — those famous preachers of Protestantism, Rokyzan the Calixtine, 
Biscupek the Taborite, Ulric of the Orphans, and the English scholar Peter 
Payne ; still more to behold the victors of so many battles, with their strange 
garments, their eagle eyes, their faces stern and scarred; and most of all the 
famous Procopius, dark, hawk-nosed, terrible in appearance as in fame. The city 
came out to stare at them ; the fathers of the council were on the wall ; the streets 
and squares were crowded ; faces were at every window ; women and children 
covered the roofs. Men who had defied the Church and conquered the empire 
were not to be seen every day. 

The pledges of the council were kept, for the cardinal legate was its presid- 
ing officer. He received the delegation in a polite address, and Rokyzan replied. 
January 16th was the day fixed for opening the debate. The Bohemians pre- 
sented their four articles, hoping for their approval, "so that they may be freely 
held, taught, and irrevocably observed in the kingdom of Bohemia and the 
march of Moravia, and in such places as adhere to the views they set forth." 
They went on to say, frankly and fairly enough, " We are ready to be united and to 
become one in the way which all Christian believers should follow, and to adhere 




CRUSADERS PERISHING FOR LACK OF WATER. 



306 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



307 



to and obey all legitimate rulers of the Church in whatever they command 
according to GotVs law : so that if council, pope, or prelate shall determine or 
command that to be done which is forbidden of God, or shall pass over, or com- 
mand to pass Over, what is written in the canon of Scripture, we shall be under 
no obligation to respect or obey them, since the law pronounces such things 
execrable and accursed. These conditions we offer, to be accepted and concluded 
mutually between } r ou and us." 

A long discussion followed, but led to no result. When a speaker on the 
opposite side used offensive expressions, some left the assembly, and Procopius 
said indignantly, "He does us great wrong, so often calling us heretics." The 
duke of Bavaria proposed a conference between a select number from each side. 
At this it was urged that the Bohemians should at once join the council, and 
abide by its decisions. This they of course refused, insisting on their four 
articles. After over two months of talk, they withdrew; but the council sent a 
deputation with them,'to try whether more could not be accomplished at Prague. 
It failed likewise ; but a compromise was agreed on a little later, by which three 
of the articles were accepted, and the use of the cup granted for a time with cer- 
tain explanations. 

DEATH OF PROCOPIUS. 

This failed to satisfy the more radical party, and the flames of civil war 
blazed again. A hideous conflict arose between the Old and New towns of Prague, 
in which twenty thousand were killed. Pro- 
copius hastily raised the seige of Pilsen and 
marched upon the capital ; but his sun of glory 
had set, and the hero who was invincible by 
foreign arms fell by the hands of his country- 
men at Bomiskbrod, May 30th, 1434. The 
Taborites and Orphans were exterminated ; the SEAL OF COUNCIL OF basi <e. 

last of their leaders, Czorka, "was hunted down like a wild beast, found under 
a rock, and hanged." 

Thus pitifully ended the most glorious chapter in Bohemian history. Two 
years later the faithless Sigismund entered Prague, and began to break down 
what had been so long in building. But he died in 1437 : the spirit of liberty 
was not dead, and the land was never wholly reconciled to Rome. Its later 
annals are full of dissensions, collisions, variations of worldly and of spiritual 
fortune. During the reign of George Podiebrad, 1457-1471, arose the " Brethren 
of the Rule of Christ," whose memory is dear to modern Protestants. They 
were accused of infamous crimes, and branded with the hated names of Picards, 
Beghards, and Waldenses. They bore much persecution patiently ; often they 
fled through the snow, treading in each other's tracks, and dragging a branch 
behind to disguise the trail from pursuers. In poverty and affliction, sometimes 




3o8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



numerous, sometimes nearly extinct, they survived to trie time of Luther, and 
long after. Protestantism, which nourished during the sixteenth century in 
Bohemia, was practically wiped out by the terrible Thirty Years' War ; but the 
lingering remnant of the ancient Brethren found refuge long after on the estates 
of Count Zinzendorf, and their name, beliefs and usages are preserved by the 
most blameless of modern sects. 




LYONS. 



CHAPTER XXL 



INQUISITION AND REFORMATION. 



HB struggles which we have followed in Languedoc, 
in England, and in Bohemia were specimens of 
what was going on all over Europe. The spiritual 
descendants of the Cathari, of Peter Waldo, and of 
Wiclif were everywhere, and everywhere the same 
arts and arms were employed against them. 
In the north of Italy the Vandois, who claimed 
an earlier origin than the Waldenses, were the 
objects of almost unremitting persecution for 
five hundred years. The synod of Verona in 
1184 had pronounced a solemn curse on all 
heretics and those who sheltered them, ordered 
their property to be confiscated and their per- 
sons given over to the executioner, and antici- 
pated the methods of the Inquisition. 

The frightful engine which carried cruelty 
to its greatest height, and whose name stands 
to the modern mind for all that is most devilish, 
was the invention of the thirteenth century. 
Till then "inquisitors" had had to do with the 
taxes : from about 1225 the wor d signified those who inquire into men's beliefs. 
The author of the system, St. Dominic, was moved by the purest motives and the 
most fervent zeal ; but no saint ever served Satan better. He founded the famous 
order which took his name ; its members, who were at first preaching friars, pres- 
ently grew into something worse. The "Holy Office," which received its name 
about 1220, speedily became the most powerful machine ever devised for sup- 
pressing free thought and preserving orthodoxy. 

This dubious task had hitherto been left to the bishops of Rome, each 
of whom, like the pagan emperors or proconsuls of old, attended to it accord- 
ing to his own ideas and temper. The synod of Toulouse, which organized 
the Inquisition for Languedoc in 1229, placed the details in the hands of 
each prelate for his own diocese. But greater efficiency was desired. An 

(309) 




3io 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



individual bishop might be lacking in zeal, in vigor, or in acuteness; so in 1234 
the Dominicans were given entire charge of the good work, and from their court 
there was no appeal but to Rome. As it was sought to spread this system 
through Europe, the Catholic bishops resisted its inroads, being jealous of any 
encroachment on their authority and willing to "bear, like the Turk, no rival 
near their throne." In England, as has been said, it was never received, 
and in France it was opposed by the chief powers of the Church ; but in Italy 
it had free course, and in Spain it became a power mightier than the crown. 
These countries were the first to accept it in its full force, respectively in 1224 
and 1232, and in both its effects were desolating. In Germany its early violence 
produced a reaction, and in 1235 the magistrates of Strasburg found it necessary 
to warn the local inquisitors to convert people by preaching, and not to burn them 
without a hearing. 

Though meant to serve religion, the Inquisition was not above being turned to* 
purposes of private malice. When it was strong, it could do what it pleased; 
when it was comparatively weak, a temporal ruler could make his arrangements 

with the pope for its use. In 13 14 
this was done in France, where the 
Knights Templar, an order of near 
three hundred years standing, had 
gained such wealth as to excite 
the greed of Philip the Fair. They 
were accused, probably on slight 
foundation, of the most atrocious 
crimes, and some of them, under 
torture, confessed whatever was de- 
sired. Hundreds of them died in 
prison or at the stake. The grand 
master, De Molay, as the flames rose about him, indignantly summoned his 
enemies to meet him at a higher tribunal ; and both pope and king died within 
a year. 

What was thus done to a famous and powerful military order could be 
practiced with ease on private persons. The chief inquisitors were able men, 
armed with a relentless purpose and the cunning of long experience. Their 
"familiars" were men in every station : their notaries made a record of all pro- 
ceedings : their executioners had pincers, rack, and coals in readiness. No- 
human power could help the victim who fell into their hands : property, liberty, 
and life had been as safe under Nero or Domitian. Many of them, no doubt, 
were men of earnest and devoted character ; but all held firmly that heresy was. 
the worst of iniquities, that outside theChnrch and its dogmas was no salvation, 
that to light the misbeliever's passage through earthly torments to everlasting 




ANCIENT LEATHER CANNON. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



3 T i 



flames was a pious act, acceptable 
to God and useful to the commu- 
nity. 

IN SPAIN. 

The Inquisition had from the 
start a congenial field in Spain, 
where were a multitude of Moors 
and Jews to be dealt with. It 
reached its most towering height 
after its reorganization there in 
1480. Its torture-chambers offered 
the best mundane imitation of the 
infernal regions, and the names of 
its chief officers, Torquemada and 
Peter Arbues, still occupy a bad 
eminence among the troublers of 
mankind. The latter was soon 
killed in the cathedral of Saragossa 
by friends of some of his victims; 
but Torquemada, who was inquisi- 
tor-general from 1482 to 1498, be- 
sides the expulsion of above eight 
hundred thousand Jews from their 
native land, has to his credit the 
burning alive of near nine thou- 
sand of his fellow-creatures, and 
the perpetual imprisonment or 
other severe punishment of ten 
times that number. While Colum- 
bus was discovering the New World, 
the auto-da-fe, or "act of faith," was 
the chief amusement of Spanish 
cities. The court, the nobles and 
their families, the people of both 
sexes and all ages, thronged to 
these spectacles as their descend- 
ants do to bull-fights, and as the 
ancient Romans did to the amphi- 
theatre to see gladiators slaughter 
each other and Christians torn by 
bears and lions. The mania for 




GATE OF THE CASTLE OF PENHADE CINTRA. 



3 i2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

blood and flames is said to have grown so great that the inquisitors were spurred 
on in their hideous work by popular clamor. 

The procedure of the Holy Office, in these later days and in this most Catho- 
lic of kingdoms, was simple. By night, at his own door — any time and place would 
answer, but secrecy was generally preferred — a familiar placed his hand upon 
the victim's shoulder; once arrested, he was not likely to be heard of again. His 
guilt was taken for granted; his accuser was his judge. Professions were un- 
availing; casual words and harmless actions were twisted into evidence of heresy. 
Spain at this time was full of Moors and Jews who, while outwardly conforming, 
really retained their old faith ; many of them were rich, and Church and king 
alike coveted their wealth. What mattered one's real sentiments, when his 
destruction was resolved on? A mere rumor, the hint of an enemy, a word 
dropped in confession, were enough to begin on ; to be suspected was to have 
given grounds for suspicion. Once in the dreaded vaults, the culprit's groans 
and shrieks could riot penetrate to outer air, as his judge and the familiars 
worked their will upon him. If he died in prison, he was burned in effigy. 
If he survived the torture without owning to his guilt, he had a slight chance of 
being released, months or years later; but it was as well to die at once. Scarred, 
lamed, mutilated, he emerged to find his property confiscated, his friends count- 
ing him dead, his name loaded with a stigma worse than that of thief or mur- 
derer. More probably he marched in procession on some festival, in coat and 
cap painted over with devils, to be lighted up, like Nero's living torches fourteen 
centuries before, for the pleasure of the crowd. 

But physical anguish was not all that the Inquisition could inflict. As Mr. 
Lecky says : 

"In those days the family was divided against itself. The ray of conviction 
often fell upon a single member, leaving all others untouched. The victims who 
died for heresy were not, like those who died for witchcraft, solitary and doting 
women, but were usually men in the midst of active life, and often in the first 
flush of youthful enthusiasm ; and those who loved them best were firmly con- 
vinced that their agonies upon earth were but the prelude of eternal agonies 
hereafter. This was especially .the case with weak women, who feel most acutely 
the sufferiugs of others, and around whose minds the clergy had most success- 
fully wound their toils. It is horrible, it is appalling, to reflect what the mother, 
the wife, the sister, the daughter of the heretic must have suffered from this teach- 
ing. She saw the body of him who was dearer to her than life, dislocated and 
writhing and quivering with pain ; she watched the slow fire creeping from limb 
to limb till it had swathed him in a sheet of agony ; and when at last the scream 
of anguish had died away and the tortured body was at rest, she was told that 
all this was acceptable to the God she served, and was but a faint image of 
the sufferings He would inflict through eternity upon the dead. Nothing was 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



3 T 3 



•wanting to give emphasis to the doctrine. It rang from every pulpit. It was 
painted over every altar." 

ETHICS OF PERSECUTION. 

Yet all these horrors did not avail to destroy the cause against which they 
were directed. The Dark Ages could not last forever. The human mind, left 
barren like a fallow field, grew ready to receive again the seed of knowledge. 
Ignorance and arbitrary rule play into each other's hands : where beliefs are 

ft*.) ( " 




PENITENTS RECEIVING ABSOLUTION. 

imposed from without and slavishly accepted under penalties, thought dies : civ- 
ilization and progress thrive only under free discussion. But thought may seem 
to die, and come to life again after a sleep of centuries. Thus was it with the 
later Middle Ages. Too long "innovation of every kind was regarded as a 
crime : superior knowledge excited only terror and suspicion. If it was shown 
in speculation, it was called heresy ; if in the study of Nature, it was called 
magic:" in either case, its reward was apt to be the stake. "The Church 
had cursed the human intellect in cursing the doubts that are the necessary 



314 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

consequence of its exercise. She had cursed even the moral faculty by asserting 
the guilt of honest error." 

The wickedness of this course, to which the men of those days were blind, 
is plain enough to us. We see that " the persecutor never can be certain that 
he is not persecuting Truth rather than error, but he may be quite certain that 
he is suppressing the spirit of Truth." Lessing said that if an angel were to 
come offering him the choice of two divine gifts, in one hand Truth itself, in 
the other the spirit of Truth, he would answer, "Give me the spirit of Truth." 
For Truth itself, the definite, absolute, and final Truth, is in most matters 
beyond us here and now ; but the Truth-loving and Truth-seeking spirit is 
within reach of every one, and is at once the chief virtue of humanity and 
the means by which it makes all its noblest gains. But these subtleties were 
unknown to the men of the Middle Ages. Between them and us was a great 
gulf fixed. Their principle, their test of Truth, was Authority; ours is Pri- 
vate Judgment. Early in the sixteenth century the two ideas came into 
violent and for the first time into not unequal conflict. In the forefront of the 
opposing hosts two banners were carried high : the inscription on one was 
Inquisition, on the other Reformation. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF TOLERATION. 

Like nearly all great leaders, the Reformers " builded better than they 
knew." They aimed to substitute one set of opinions and usages for another: 
the development of their essential principles was left for later generations. 
Neither Luther nor Calvin would have assented to the doctrine which Jeremy 
Taylor, "the Shakespeare of divines," the greatest ornament of the English 
Church, put forth in 1657 in his "Liberty of Prophesying." Before turning 
back to the horrors which Christian men, not understanding the beauty and 
duty of tolerance, perpetrated on one another in their Master's name, let us 
pause a moment to digest the most brilliant and instructive passage of this 
admirable book : 

"It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing opinions. Un- 
natural ; for understanding, being a thing wholly spiritual, cannot be restrained, 
and therefore neither punished, by corporal afflictions. It is in aliena republica, 
a matter of another world. You may as well cure the colic by brushing a man's 
clothes, or fill a man's belly with a syllogism. These things do not communi- 
cate in matter, and therefore neither in action nor passion ; and since all punish- 
ments, in a prudent government, punish the offender to prevent a future crime, 
and so it proves more medicinal than vindictive, the punitive act being in order 
to the cure and prevention ; and since no punishment of the body can cure a 
disease in the soul, it is disproportionable in nature ; and in all civil government, 
to punish where the punishment can do no good, it may be an act of tyranny. 



3i6 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

hut never of justice. For is an opinion ever the more true or false for being per- 
secuted ? Some men have believed it the more, as being provoked into a confi- 
dence and vexed into a resolution ; but the thing itself is not the truer ; and though 
the hangman may confute a man with an inexplicable dilemma, yet not convince 
his understanding: for such premises can infer no conclusion but that of a 
man's life; and a wolf may as well give laws to the understanding as he whose 
■dictates are only propounded in violence and writ in blood. And a dog is as 
capable of a law as a man, if there be no choice in his obedience, nor discourse 
in his choice, nor reason to satisfy his discourse. 

"And as it is unnatural, so it is unreasonable that Sempronius should force 
Cains to be of his opinion because Sempronius is consul this year and commands 
the lictors ; as if he that can kill a man cannot but be infallible: and if he be 
not, why should I do violence to my conscience because he can do violence to 
my person ? " 

It is easy — it was easy even under Nero and Diocletian — to see the wicked- 
ness of our enemies in persecuting us ; but it was reserved for the nineteenth 
century to admit that the other side has rights as sacred as ours. The early 
Protestants, with few exceptions, perceived this no more clearly than the papists. 
The doctrine of general toleration was first proclaimed by Chatillon or Castellio, 
who was a French scholar and an early friend of Calvin. He denounced the 
burning of Servetus, and insisted that theology was a series of developments, 
that error might be innocent, and that the object of beliefs was to make men 
better. Such heresies could no more be tolerated in reformed Switzerland than 
hy Simon de Montfort or the council of Constance. Castellio shared the fate of 
those who are too far ahead of their age : he was driven from his professorship 
at Geneva and Basle, abhorred as an infidel or worse, and left to die in abject 
poverty. 

LUTHER. 

But however imperfect may have been the perceptions and sympathies of 
the chief Reformers, they lifted the world out of the slough of despond in which 
it had long been wallowing, and caused such light as they had to shine far into 
the general darkness. They laid the foundations on which we have since been 
huilding; Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, and 
America are what they are largely because these great men could see further 
into the Bible and human nature than the popes did, and because they had all 
the courage of their convictions. It was a disciple of Socinus (nominally at 
least) who wrote thus about Luther : 

" Half-battles were the words he said, 

Each born of prayer, baptized in tears ; 
And, routed by them, backward fled 
The errors of a thousand years." 




MARTIN LUTHER. 
From a portrait by Lucas Cranach. painted in 15I&. 



317 



3« 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



When he nailed his ninety-five propositions to the church-door at Wittem- 
berg, and burned the pope's bull, he delivered some of the most telling blows 
for freedom that were ever struck. -He was a fighter all through, and said, 
when his friends held up the fate of Huss before him, that he would go to Worms 
if there were as many devils there as tiles on the houses. His courage and his 
faith were infectious, and emboldened others who had been thinking some of the 
same thoughts to come out and say so. Whether by the arm of flesh or simply 

that of the spirit, it was 
fearless moral strength that 
won the battle through half 
the civilized world. 

It is not our purpose to 
repeat the familiar history 
of the Reformation in the 
north, nor to detail the 
horrors b} T which it was 
stamped out in the south. 
The devil does not die easily, 
and wheu he can he much 
prefers to kill those who 
rise against him. The Re- 
formation had a fair start in 
Italy and Spain, but the 
pope and the Inquisition 
were too strong there. It is 
a mistake to suppose that 
persecution is never suc- 
cessful. When it is fierce 
euough, and steady enough, 
and continued long enough, 
it will accomplish its object: 
this has been repeatedly 
proved. Much depends on 
the national temper, much on the will of sovereigns. In northern Germany 
the princes protected Luther and his doctrines: in England one monarch 
broke with the pope, another fostered the Reformation, a third tried to put 
it down, and under a fourth it was established. But where a state uses all 
its power to suppress a new faith, and the adherents of that faith are not able 
io resist in arms and keep on resisting, they will be either exterminated, 
driven out of the country, or compelled to recant. Already we have seen 
these various results in Languedoc, England, and Bohemia: we shall see 




-._.-_ 



CATHERINE VON BORA, WIFE OF LUTHER. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



3*9 



them again in France, where the Protestants were beaten after a long struggle, 
and in Holland, where they made the most magnificent fight in modern history, 
and won. The struggle lasted for a hundred years or more, and the present 
conditions of the various peoples of Europe were largely determined in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries. 



FIRST MARTYRS OF THE REFORMATION. 

Nowhere was the transition easy from spiritual servitude to comparative 
liberty. The Church had long had its grip on every court, city, and village, 
and was reluctant to let go. In Swit- 
zerland, France, England, there were 
victims. In the Low Countries (now 
Belgium and the Netherlands), long 
afflicted by Spanish rule, the number 
mounted high into the thousands. 
Two young Augustinian monks, 
Henry Voes and John Esch, were the 
first martyrs of that region. Fleeing 
from persecution at Antwerp, they 
were arrested, taken in chains to 
Brussels, and condemned for main- 
taining that God alone, not the priest, 
had power to forgive sins. The in- 
quisitor asked them to confess that 
they had been seduced by Luther : 
they answered, " As the Apostles 
were seduced by Christ." They were 
publicly burned July ist, 1523, re- 
peating, the Creed and calling on their Master. In their honor Luther wrote 
a poem which passes for the first of his hymns ; part of it is familiar in a 
free English version : 

"Flung to the heedless winds, or on the waters cast, 
Their ashes shall be watched and gathered at the last ; 
And from that scattered dust, around us and abroad, 
Shall spring a plenteous seed of witnesses for God. 

Jesus hath now received their latest living breath ; 

Yet vain is Satan's boast of victory in their death. 

Still, still, though dead, they speak, and trumpet- tongued proclaim 

To many a wakening land the one availing Name." 

Thirteen years later, and within a few miles of the same spot, perished 
in like manner a famous man of God, the greatest of all English translators of 




LUTHER'S CELL. ERFURT. 



320 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



tlie Bible. William Tyndale's work was done under heavy difficulties, but it in- 
cludes the New Testament and half the Old; thus far it "is not only the basis 
of those portions of the Authorized Version, but constitutes nine-tenths" of them. 
The last ten years of his life, so far as we know, were spent on the continent, 
and largely in concealment ; for the hunters of heresy from his native land were 
always on his track. One of these blood-hounds found him at last at Antwerp, 
and, after claiming his hospitality and borrowing some money of him, betrayed 
hiin to the authorities. He was taken to the castle of Vilvorde, and there 
burned October 6th, 1536, having first been mercifully strangled. His last 
words were among the noblest and most pathetic ever uttered: "Lord, open the 
king of England's eyes!" 




HOUSE IN WHICH LUTHER LIVED. 




CHAPTER XXII. 



SMITHFIELD FIRES. 



NGLAND, as we have seen, was the theatre of 
an active religious movement long before 
Luther's day. That movement was crushed, 
and the land remained apparently rooted in 
the old faith. The people were of a practical 
turn, not fond of novelties, little given to 
theological speculation, and loyally attached 
— until their freedom-loving consciences were 
outraged — to their monarchs. Throughout 
the sixteenth century the Tudors held the 
country in the hollow of their hands ; scarce 
any attempted, few desired, to say them nay. 
Reform therefore had to come from above, not 
from the middle or lower strata of society, as 
it did in Germany. Tyndale's dying prayer expressed the feelings even of the 
persecuted. If the king's eyes were once opened, those of the kingdom would 
follow ; the king was all-important, nothing could be done without him. 

The martyr's prayer was answered, though not to the letter. The king's 
eyes were opened only in part, but through his self-will a door was set ajar — not 
thrown wide at once, but pushed back by slow degrees — through which Tyndale's 
Bible and the light he loved might enter. 

No chapter of history is more familiar, and none is more important, than 
this. It is a fashion with some to sneer at the British Reformation, as savoring 
too much of politics and princes ; as if State as well as Church were not ordained 
and tolerated from on high, and one no more infallible than the other. Those 
who would have Truth and Grace enter the affairs of nations with no mixture of 
earthly alloy, must seek in some other planet than this. The sweetest saints 
have not been so gifted as to exhibit unmixed wisdom or render faultless service. 
He who causes the wrath of man to praise Him can also use men's lusts and 
selfish policies to further His own ends. Base as the king and nobles might be 
who broke with Rome, there was heroism enough in England before the reform 
was made secure. The chief martyrs not only gave their blood to cement the 
edifice, but had done their best to guide the hands that unwillingly laid its found- 
ations. 

(321) 



322 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



HENRY VIII. 

Henry VIII. wished to divorce his first wife, Katharine of Aragon. The 
pope would have been glad to gratify him, bnt could not, for fear of a yet 
mightier potentate, the king of Spain and emperor of Germany. So Henry 
threw off all connection with the see of Rome, and declared himself head of the 
English Church. That, with a wholesale, hasty, and rather scandalous pillage 
of the monasteries, was about the extent of his reforming zeal. In earlier years 
he had earned the title, still worn by his successors, of " Defender of the Faith," 
by a highly orthodox treatise ; and he had little or no desire to change any re- 
maining points of doctrine, discipline, or worship. But it is easier to start a 
movement than to control it after it is started. The clergy submitted — they 
had to ; but the change set men thinking, and those of the better sort knew 
what was going on across the North sea. The nobles looked to their pockets, 
and grew rich by the plunder of the abbeys : the scholars consulted their books, 
and worked their brains harder than had been their custom : among the common 
people the lingering embers of the old Lollard faith were stirred by the preach- 
ing of a few who had read Tyndale's Testament. In those days such of the 
clergy as were able became statesmen or ministers of state. Cranmer, who was 
made archbishop in 1532, was the moving spirit of his time. Moderate, adroit, 
a consummate courtier and politician, yet sincerely devoted to " the new learn- 
ing," he guided the ship of reform through dangerous and intricate channels 
with success, where it might have been wrecked with a firmer character at the 
helm. Himself and his cause detested by the old papal party, his tact and the 
king's favor carried him safe through many plots and perils. Whatever his 
failings, English Protestants owe to him a debt immeasurable. 

MARY TUDOR. 

The much-married king left but three children by his various wives. 
Edward VI., who succeeded him in 1547, was the son of Jane Seymour, and a 
boy of nine. He had been brought tip a strict Protestant, and Cranmer and 
the Reformers now had it all their own way. But .their triumph was brief, for 
six years later he died. The time had not come to talk of a "Protestant suc- 
cession," and the effort to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne resulted only in 
her execution and that of her friends ; for the English were conservative, and 
she was not the legal heir. That heir, inelegantly but justly styled "Bloody 
Mary," was the daughter of Katharine of Aragon, and a bigoted papist. There 
have been few more melancholy or misplaced sovereigns. Unattractive, lonely, 
gloomy, severely conscientious, and far more sensitive than sensible, she had 
brooded from childhood over her mother's wrongs. Her marriage to Philip II. 
of Spain was a wretched failure ; her hopes of an heir came to nothing. One 
motive sustained her, one purpose ruled her life, — her fanatical devotion to the 




323 



324 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



old ways. As she told her Parliament, she believed she had been "predestined 
and preserved by God for no other end save that He might make nse of her 
above all else, in bringing back the realm to the Catholic faith." Her coun- 
cillors, all approved servants of the pope, strove to restrain her zeal, knowing 
her chosen measures to be ill adapted to the English taste, and likely to hurt 
rather than help her cause ; but she would not be restrained. In the flush of 
her accession and under pressure of her advisers, she did indeed promise the 

people of London that "though her own 

conscience was stayed (i.e., hindered) 

in matters of religion, yet she meant not 

to compel or strain men's consciences 

otherwise than God should, as she 

trusted, put in their hearts a persuasion 

of the truth that she was in, through 

*- the opening of His 

word to them by godly 

and virtuous and 

learned preachers." 

But this rational 

method proved much 

too mild: her promise 

was cast aside, and 

word went forth to light 

the fires for heresy. 

The news was per- 
sonally alarming to but 
a fraction of any class, 
for the country as yet 
was by no means firmly 
Protestant. The nobles 
had made haste to face 
about; among the 
clergy were many vicars 
of Bray, whose principle 
was to hold their places ; 
and a large majority 
of priests and people still at heart preferred the old ways. Of the Reformers 
such as were at liberty, and had prudence and cash to spare, fled to their 
friends on the continent : Geneva and Germany welcomed some noted exiles, 
who were to be useful in the next reign. Those who remained set their lips 
together and awaited what was to come. Early in 1555 began a series of 




WILLIAM TYNDALE. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 325 



exhibitions such as England had not seen before, and was never to see again. 
Let it be remembered that there was no complication of foreign war or 
domestic rebellion. One or two risings had been easily put down, the few 
traitors were executed or outlawed. In a time of profound peace, surrounded 
by a submissive and 103'al people, the queen began to commit her subjects to 
the flames for a mere difference of religious forms, professions, and opinions. 
In her mother's country, Spain, this would have been a matter of course : in 
Italy, France, or parts of Germany, it might not have occasioned much com- 
ment : in England it was an unusual proceeding, and a grave mistake. It 
was her own work, first and chiefly. Her new archbishop, Pole, "a cardinal 
and pope's legate, agreed to it with reluctance. Of course she found spirits like 
her own, to attend to the details of judicial murder. Bonner, bishop of London, 
was the chief assistant-butcher: Gardiner of Lincoln, then lord chancellor, 
helped at first to sharpen the stakes and gather fagots : both passed for learned 
and able men. Edward's bishops, or most of them, had been deposed, and were 
now to be tried as by fire. It was a bad day for England, but worst of all for the 
persecutors and for their cause, that sought to stand on innocent blood. 

TRIAL OF THE BISHOPS. 

It took but a year to undo what had been done under Henry and Edward, 
to unite the realm — or at least the government — to Rome, more closely than it 
had ever been united before, and to pass the requisite laws against heresy and 
heretics. In April, 1554, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were taken from the 
Tower to Oxford, and there examined at length by certain theologians of the 
old school. The dispute, as with Cobham and the other Lollards, turned chiefly 
on the Real Presence in the mass or communion. All engaged in it were learned 
men, and the three Reformers were among the ablest in England. Latimer, 
being unduly urged, replied, "No, I pray 3^011, be good to an old man. If it 
please God, you may come to be as old as I am." But respect for age or venera- 
ble character was not a trait of the persecutors. As to the doctrine of the 
eucharist, he said that Christ " gave not His body to be thus received ; He gave 
the sacrament to the mouth, His body to the mind. 1 ' 

It is to be noted that all the trials were mainly on this point : to den} r tran- 
substantiation was the unpardonable sin. The princess Elizabeth, half-sister to 
Mary and afterwards queen, being at this time in confinement and under grave 
suspicion on political as well as religious grounds, and much badgered by 
divines who sought to get evidence against her from her own mouth, is said 
to have given this prudent and admirable answer : 

" He was the Word that spake it : 
He took the bread and brake it ; 
And what that Word did make it 
I do believe and take it." 



326 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



The lines were probably 
written by Dr. Donne, 
who was born some years 
after Elizabeth's acces- 
sion ; but they doubtless 
give the substance of her 
reply to the inquisitors. 

When the three 
bishops were condemned, 
Cranmer arose and said, 
"From this your sentence 
I appeal to the just judg- 
ment of God Almighty, 
trusting to be present 




with Him in heaven, for 
whose presence at the 
altar I am thus con- 
demned." Ridley came 
next; "Though I be not 
of your company, yet I 
doubt not that my name 
is written in another 
place, whither this sent- 
ence will send us sooner 
than in the course of 
nature we should have 
gone." Latimer added, 
"I thank God most 




CATHEDRAL OF WORMS. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 327 

heartily, that He hath prolonged my life to this end that I may glorify Him 
by that kind of death." 

THE ENGLISH MARTYRS. 

The fires of Smithfield were not lighted till the next year, and these leaders 
were not the first to suffer. The roll of Marian martyrs was headed by John 
Rogers, whom Ridley had made one of the clergy of St. Paul's cathedral in 
London. As he was led out on February 4th, 1555, repeating the fifty-first psalm, 
his wife and eleven children met him, "ten able to walk and one at the breast ;" 
for the Reformers had long since cast aside the rule that priests may not marry. 
As he was chained to the stake his pardon was brought, signed and sealed, and 
offered him if he would recant, but he refused. A great crowd had gathered to 
see him burn, and wondered as he washed his hands in the flame. Four days 
later Lawrence Sanders, a preacher who had been educated at Eton and Cam- 
bridge, met the same fate at Coventry, embracing the stake and crying: "Wel- 
come, the cross of Christ ! Welcome, everlasting life !" On the ninth a more 
distinguished victim, John Hooper, late bishop of Gloucester, died by lingering 
agonies in his cathedral city, the fagots being green and the wind violent. The 
account of his sufferings, which lasted near an hour, is too horrible to repeat; 
but they were borne with perfect patience and fortitude. 

Dr. Rowland Taylor, vicar of Hadleigh in Suffolk, having been arrested in 
London, was taken to his parish to be executed. His wife and children watched 
by night in the street for his coming, and took a tender farewell. On the way 
he was "merry and cheerful as one going to a banquet or bridal." The sheriff 
asked how he fared ; he answered, " Never better, for I am almost at home. But 
two stiles to go over, and I am even at my Father's house." The streets were 
full of his parishioners, weeping and lamenting. " God save thee, good Dr. 
Taylor," they cried: "Christ strengthen thee and help thee ! The Holy Ghost 
comfort thee ! " When the fire was kindled, a man cruelly cast a fagot at him, 
which struck his face, so that the blood ran down. "Friend," said he, "I have 
harm enough; what needed that?" He had not been allowed to speak to the 
people ; and as he was repeating the fifty -first psalm, a knight struck him on the 
lips, saying: "You knave, speak in Latin, or I will make you." Having com- 
mended his soul to God, "he stood still without either crying or moving, with 
his hands folded together, till one with a halberd struck him on the head, so 
that the brains fell out, and the corpse fell down into the fire." 

LATIMER AND RIDLEY. 

These four perished in February. In March eight followed, among them 
Robert Ferrar, who had been bishop of St. David's, and was burned at Carmar- 
then in Wales. By the end of September sixty-two had perished. October 16th, 
1555, was the last day on earth of Ridley and Latimer, the famous and godly 




LATIMER EXORTING RIDLEY AT THE STAKE. 

'Be of good comfort. Master Ridley, and play ttie man; we shall tliis day ligld such a candle by God's grace as I trust shall never be put out." 
328 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 329 

ex-bishops of London and Worcester ; Oxford, which had been their place of 
trial and imprisonment, witnessed their last confession. The dying words of 
Latimer were a prophecy : " Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the 
man ; we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust 
shall never be put out." We are told that he "received the flame as it were 
embracing it. After he had stroked his face with his hands, and, as it were, 
bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died, as it appeared, with very little pain, 
or none." 

These triumphs over death were not confined to great prelates and learned 
divines. Plain tradesmen and mechanics, women and boys, shared the spirit 
as well as the fate of Latimer, Ridlej', Taylor, Bradford, and Rogers. Bonner 
asked a youth if he thought he could bear the fire : for answer, he placed his 
hand in the flame of a candle and held it there, like Mutius Scsevola of classic 
fame. Another, when chained to the stake, requested the bystanders to pray 
for him. One of them brutally replied, "No more than I will pray for a dog." 
"Then," cried the young martyr,' "Son of God, shine upon me!" It was a 
dark day, but at once the sun shone out from a cloud. 

CRANMER. 

The most eminent, though not the noblest, of the victims was the late arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. Cranmer was not of heroic mould, and under long 
imprisonment his courage failed. Like Jerome of Prague he recanted shame- 
fully, and said or signed whatever was required of him. But his sentence, as 
primate of England, had been left to Rome, 'and Rome knew no forgiveness. 
When he found that his doom was still the stake, he called out all his latent 
manhood, and made as imposing an end as that of Jerome. On March 21st, 
1556, a dignified assemblage waited in St. Mary's Church at Oxford to hear his 
last recantation ; but they were sorely disappointed. Almost in Jerome's words 
he said, "Now I come to the great thing that troubles my conscience more than 
any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad 
of writings contrary to the Truth ; which here I now renounce and refuse as 
things written by m} r hand contrary to the Truth which I thought in my heart, 
and written for fear of death to save 1113- life, if it might be. And forasmuch 
as my hand offended in writing contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall 
be the first punished ; for if I come to the fire, it shall be the first burned." 
And so it was: at the stake, exclaiming, "This was the hand that wrote it: this 
unworthy hand!" he held it steadily in the flame, and ''never stirred nor cried" 
till his atonement was finished with his life. 

The series of object-lessons they were getting could not be lost upon the 
English people. The old British love of liberty and justice was roused by the 
ferocity of government and the firmness of its victims. The smoke of each 



33o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

succeeding sacrifice carried abroad seeds of the new doctrines : the martyrs preached 
more effectually by their deaths than they had done with living lips. Yet the 
latest and best historians agree that the archbishop's fate, alike from his promi- 
nence and his weakness, made the deepest impression. Says Mr. Green : 

" It was with the unerring instinct of a popular movement that, among a. 
crowd of far more heroic sufferers, the Protestants fixed, in spite of his recanta- 
tions, on the martyrdom of Cranmer as the deathblow to Catholicism in England. 
For one man who felt within him the joy of Rowland Taylor at the prospect of 
the stake, there were thousands who felt the shuddering dread of Cranmer. The 
triumphant cry of Latimer could reach only hearts as bold as his own, while 
the sad pathos of the primate's humiliation and repentance struck chords of 
sympathy and pity in the hearts of all. It is from that moment that we may 
trace the bitter remembrance of the blood shed in the cause of Rome, which still 
lies graven deep in the temper of the English people." 

MARY'S FAILURE. 

A new and fanatical pope was doing his best — and for such purposes he 
was wellnigh omnipotent — to embarrass the most devoted servant of Rome that 
ever wore a crown. Paul IV. refused to accept the submission of England till 
the queen had restored all the property which her father had wrested from the 
Church. This was far beyond her power. The monasteries had been long dis- 
solved, their buildings were in ruins, their lands had passed into other hands ;, 
and the nobles, who came cheerfully back to the old faith, had no mind to give 
up any of their plunder. So the island remained but partly reconciled to Rome. 
But Mary, in profound discouragement, kept on offering human sacrifices to this 
implacable Moloch. Disheartened but dogged, she insisted that the burnings 
should continue, and they did. Gardiner had withdrawn from them in disgust 
before his death ; the bishop of London was the only high instrument left to 
her hand. Some have attempted to defend Bonner, but it is easier to make 
excuses for Torquemada and Alva, since England had not the history or the 
temper of Spain. When Elizabeth came to the throne, this butcher offered his 
obeisance with the rest, but she refused to let him kiss her hand, and under a 
justice far more merciful than that which he had administered, he spent his last 
ten years in prison. 

It would be tedious and useless to repeat the list of Mary's martyrs. Not 
that we depend for them, as in the first Christian centuries, on scattered docu- 
ments or doubtful tradition. The flames of these unjust judgments burnt their 
mark into history : the names, the dates, the places, often the minutes of the 
trials and incidents of the executions, were preserved, and have been made 
familiar through that long-famous book, Foxe's "Acts and Monuments." In 
1555 there were seventy-two burnings, or rather that number of victims ; in 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



33 r 



1556, ninety-four; in 1557, seventy-nine; and in 1558, thirty-nine; in all two 
hundred and eighty-four, over forty of them in London. " In a single day thirteen 
persons, two of them women, were burnt at Stratford-le-Bow. _ Seventy-three 
Protestants of Colchester were dragged through the streets of London, tied to a 
single rope." 

THE REACTION. 

Yet all was unavailing. " The old spirit of insolent defiance, of outrageous 
violence, rose into fresh life at the challenge of persecution. A Protestant hung 
a string of puddings round a priest's neck in derision of his beads. The restored 
images were grossly insulted. 
The old scurrilous ballads 
against the mass and relics were 
heard in the streets. Men were 
goaded to sheer madness by the 
bloodshed and violence about 
them. One wretch, driven to 
frenzy, stabbed the 
priest of St. Margaret's 
as he stood with the 
chalice in his hand." 

Nor were the burn- 
ings merely ineffectual ; 
they produced just the 
opposite result from 
that intended. One 
wrote to Bonner, " You 
have lost the hearts of 
twenty thousand that 
were rank papists 
within these twelve 
months." Such as had 
not parted from the old 
opinions felt that the 
bonds of humanity 
and nationality rose 
superior to those of 
creed. On July 28th, 
1558, when the queen, 
between disappointment and disease, was near her end, " there were seven men 
burned in Smithfield, a fearful and a cruel proclamation being made that, under 
pain of present death, no man should either approach nigh unto them, touch 




ARCHBISHOP CRANMER. 
(From a portrait in the Bibliotheque Nationale.) 



332 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



them, speak to them, or comfort them. Yet were they so comfortably taken by 
the hand and so goodly comforted, notwithstanding that fearful proclamation 
and the present threatenings of the sheriffs and sergeants, that the adversaries 
were astonished. The crowd round the fire shouted " Amen " to the martyrs' 

prayers, and 
prayed with 
them that God 
would strength- 
en them." 

Scandalized 
by these horrors, 
and yearning for 
them to end, the 
nation felt that 
its sovereign was 
of a temper alien 
to its own — 
rather Spanish 
or Italian than 
English. A long 
poem of that 
doleful time re- 
cites the suffer- 
ings of the many 
martyrs, giving 
a word or a verse 
to each, aud ends 
every stanza 
with "We longed 
for our Eliza- 
beth." On No- 
vember 17th, 
1558, Mary died, 
and England, 
though not yet 
half converted 

from the old ways, welcomed Elizabeth as it had never welcomed her sister. 
The burnings stopped at once : the prison-doors opened : the exiles came back ; 
and the land drew a long breath of relief, knowing that the changes which 
had to come would be brought in with a due regard to reason, justice, and 
decency. 




QUEEN ELIZABETH. 




CATHERINE DISCUSSING THEOLOGY WITH HENRY VIU. 



333. 



334 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

ELIZABETH. 

Elizabeth, was a heroic rather than an attractive personage. Prudent, reso- 
lute, and imperious, a ''Henry VIII. in petticoats," she justified the confidence of 
her subjects, and embodied the national cause, much more than any approved 
type of feminine character. She was no lover of liberty for its own sake, and 
had no warm attachment to the doctrines of Luther or of Calvin. The Puritans 
she always disliked and treated harshly, though they were her firmest supporters. 
She would have preferred to rule with the high hand as her father had done ; but 
she was well aware that times had changed, aud that the strongest motive she 
knew, self-interest, bound her tight to the Protestant cause. Why ? For an 
obvious and most domestic reason. She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whom 
Henry had married (and beheaded) while Katharine, his first wife, was living. 
Both marriages could not be legal, and therefore either she or her sister Mary 
was illegitimate and no heir to the throne. The pope had decided for Katharine 
and Mary : his successors could not if they would, they would not if they could, 
acknowledge Anne's marriage or Anne's daughter : therefore Elizabeth and 
Rome were mortal foes. On such personal causes often depend the fate of 
nations and the complexion of churches : and these complications, with a good 
deal of help from Mary's too zealous burnings, made England Protestant. The 
national Church received its character of happy compromise mainly from the 
embarrassed position and strong will of the last Tudor monarch. 

The nation, which had already experienced much violent jolting from her 
royal relatives, was willing to be governed as she saw fit. The politic were ready 
to change again their prayer-books and their principles : court, parliament, and 
convocation were little more than puppets in the hands of so vigorous a queen. 
The Protestants rejoiced, expecting to have their own way — which they did not 
get so completely as they expected. Most of the Catholics were used to dealing 
with the pope at long range or not at all, and content to learn new ways of doc- 
trine and devotion if they were obliged to. A small faction, acknowledging a 
foreign sway, went abroad or remained at home to engage in deep and dangerous 
plots against Elizabeth's throne and life : this fact, and the constant perils to 
which it exposed her, increased the loyal love of her people, and explain the 
severities and cruelties to which she was sometimes driven. The deplorable fate 
of the poet Southwell, and some other events which shock our modern sensibili- 
ties, were in part excused by the belief that every secret emissary of the pope 
carried — as many of them really did — a concealed dagger to aim at the breast of 
the heretic queen. 

In reorganizing the Church, as she speedily did, her trouble was with the 
clergy in general. • Men enough could be found of the sort she wanted for the 
few bishoprics : \mt the mass of the parish priests were so ignorant, if not 
so wedded to the old ways, that they could not be trusted to concoct their own 




335 



336 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

sermons. For this reason the Homilies were imposed ; they make dreary reading; 
now, and have long ceased to be needed. Edward's Prayer-Book was revised, 
and the Articles, which were then considered an important part of it, served as a 
carefully prepared body of doctrine. With these safeguards to restrain or guide 
the zeal of certain licensed preachers, the cause and its progress might be trusted 
to the healing influences of time. Dissent was not then dreamed of, though its 
materials were accumulating. The established order was fenced in with penal- 
ties, though religious killing was happily gone out of fashion. During a long,, 
able, and successful reign, though by no means one of perfect peace and quiet, 
the Reformation completed its work, and England became Protestant forever. 
We shall have to see later something of the steps by which tolerance and liberty 
of conscience won their slow and painful victories. 

IN SCOTLAND. 

The Scottish Reformation was another affair, and deserves more space than 
we can give it. Its first martyr, Patrick Hamilton, was a youth of the highest 
connections, a great-grandson of King James II. At thirteen, after the corrupt 
fashion of that day, he was made abbot of Feme. While studying abroad, he 
received the new learning from Erasmus. Accused of heresy at home, he fled 
to Germany, came under Tyndale's influence, but soon returned to preach in the 
rural parts. Cardinal Beaton, the primate of Scotland, enticed him to St. An- 
drew's under pretence of a conference, and then treacherously arrested him. He 
was condemned for "detestable opinions," and burned February 29th, 1528, being 
hardly twenty-four years old. As one of the papists expressed it, his " reek in- 
fected as many as it did blow upon." Eighteen years later George Wishart 
suffered at the same place. At the stake he predicted the death of the tyrannical 
archbishop, who was soon after murdered. Wishart' s influence had secured to 
the cause a most important recruit in the person of John Knox, whose fiery 
sermons, especially after his return from Geneva in 1559, resulted in the speedy 
destruction of the monasteries, the removal of images and pictures from the 
churches, and the general overthrow of the old system. On August 1st, 1560, 
the Parliament, following the popular impulse, threw off the papal yoke and 
established the reformed religion in its Presbyterian form. Queen Mary, who 
returned from France a year later, did her best to undo this work, with only 
partial success. She tried her fascinations on Knox in vain : enraged by his 
fierce denunciations, she exclaimed, " I cannot get quit of you : I vow to God I 
shall be once revenged !" She had him tried for treason and otherwise harassed ; 
but in 1568 she was a prisoner, and in 1587 her death-warrant was signed by 
Elizabeth. With Mary Stuart expired the last hope of renewed Romish suprem- 
acy in Britain. 




m 

Cnpyi-ightEti IB93 



Geo.F Lasher L-.iho.Phila 



THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 




CHAPTER XXIII. 



IN FRANCE. 



E have seen that the revolt against Rome, and 
in good degree the doctrines of Luther and 
Calvin, were anticipated in the south of 
France, three hundred years before, by the 
Cathari and Waldenses. Savagely persecuted 
and driven from one hiding-place to another, 
these sects were never wholly extirpated. Soon 
after the Alhigensian wars a colony of Vaudois, finding their lot intolerable 
in Piedmont, had fled across the border and settled between Nice and Avignon. 
Their descendants, very early in the sixteenth century, were reported to Louis 
XII. as heretics. He ordered an investigation, and as its result directed the 
accusations to be thrown into the river, and said, "These people are much better 
Christians than I am." A little later they sent delegates to confer with the 
German and Swiss Reformers, and raised fifteen hundred crowns to print the first 
French version of the Bible. 

Meantime a doctrinal reform had begun at the other end of France with 
Jacques Faber, or Lefevre, who in 15 12 put forth a Latin commentary on St. 
Paul's epistles. He was afterwards forced to take refuge in the south, at the 
court of Navarre, while Farel and other learned men of similar views found it 
best to leave a country in which they were not safe. The cause was thus left 
in the hands of the poor and humble. Bernard Palissy, famous for discovering 
and perfecting the process of enameling potter)', and afterwards a sufferer for 
his faith, tells thus of his own efforts at Saintes, near the west coast, which were 
like those of many : 

"There was in this town a certain artisan, marvelously poor, who had so 
great a desire for the advancement of the gospel that he explained it day by day 
to another as needy as himself, and with as little learning — for they both knew 
scarcely anything. Yet the first urged upon the other that if he would occupy 
himself in making some kind of exhortation, it might do much good. Thus per- 
suaded, one Sunday morning he collected nine or ten persons, and read to them 

(337) 



338 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



some passages from the Old and New Testaments, which he had written down. 
These he explained, and added that as each had received from God, he ought 
to distribute to others. They agreed that six of them should speak thus, on suc- 
cessive Sundays. That was the beginning of the reformed church at Saintes." 
As Dr. Hanna has shown, in his sketch of the Huguenot wars, France was 
then in a condition different from other countries, and peculiarly unfavorable to 

the Reforma- 
tion. "The 
Church was not 
groaning there 
under the same 
bondage that 
elsewhere op- 
pressed her ; she 
had already 
fought for and 
so far achieved 
her independ- 
ence that no 
foreign priests 
were intruded 
into her highest 
offices, nor were 
her revenues 
liable to be di- 
verted at the 
pope's will into 
Italianchannels. 
Philip the Fair 
had two centu- 
ries before eman- 
cipated the mon- 
archy. Neither 
Church nor state 
had in France the 
same grounds of 




HUGUENOT PEASANT AT HOME- 



quarrel with 
Rome which they had in other lands. There was less material there for the Re- 
formers to work upon. With little to attract either king or clergy, the Reformation 
had in its first aspects everything to repel them. The Church saw in it a denial of 
her authority, a repudiation of her doctrine, a simplification of her worship, an 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



339 



overturn of her proud and ambitious hierarchy. The royal power was in conflict 

with two enemies — the feudal independence of the nobles, which it wished to 

destroy, and the growing freedom of the <v^ vvS ^"> ^ 

great cities, which it wished to curb. To 

both these enemies of the crown, the 

Reformation, itself a child of liberty, 

promised to lend aid. Absolutism on the 

throne looked on it with jealousy and 

dread. Alone and unbe- 

friended, it had from the 

beginning to confront in 

France bitter persecution, 

a persecution instigated 

at first by the clergy alone, 

afterwards by the clergy 

and the monarch acting 

in willing concert." 

FRANCIS I. 

Francis I., the most 
popular sovereign in Eu- 
rope, who ruled from 15 15 
to 1547, was for some time 
indifferent to the spread of 
heresy in his dominions. 
He invited not only Eras- 
mus but Melanchthon to 
his court, and applauded 
a play in which the pope 
and his cardinals were 
ridiculed. He patronized 
Lefevre, and twice saved 
Louis de Berquin, who by 
his books had roused the 
wrath of the orthodox 
Parliament, and who at 
last, in 1529, was seized 
and hastily executed in 

Francis' absence, u lest francis 1. 

recourse should be had to the king." His sister, Margaret of Valois, had 
much influence over him; she favored the new doctrines, and he sharply 




34o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

resented reflections made upon her by monks, preachers, and the theologians 
of the Sorbonne. But in after years he came to believe, what there were plenty 
to assure him of, that "Lutherans" were dangerous to the government, and 
that nothing but harm could come of tolerating them. After he had married 
his son to the pope's niece, he announced that France should have but one king, 
one law, and one faith. But his first severities were provoked by the foolish 
action of an enthusiast who, in the early morning of October 18th, 1534, covered 
the walls of Paris with placards reflecting in offensive terms on the "intolerable 
abuses of the popish mass." One of these was placed at the door of the king's 
chamber in the castle of Amboise. Always jealous of his dignity, Francis was 
very angry, and his wrath involved the innocent with the guilty. Many now 
suffered by the "estrapades," a horrible device presently used to strike terror to 
the heart of heresy. 

THE ESTRAPADES. 

In the morning of January 21st, 1535, all Paris was agog to see a very 
splendid procession, surpassing anything ever known before. In front marched 
priests bearing little chests which contained the most precious relics — the head 
of the spear which pierced the side of Christ ; the crown of thorns ; a piece of 
the true cross ; the skull of St. Louis, and many more. Next came a multitude 
of clergy of every rank, from cardinals and archbishops down, all in their richest 
robes. The king walked bareheaded, holding a huge wax candle, and was fol- 
lowed by princes, nobles, ambassadors, the parliament, the court, the ministers 
of state. The procession halted at six places, which offered the chief attractions 
of the day. At each of them stood an altar with its decorations, and beside it — 
instead of children dressed to represent angels, as usual — a pile of blazing 
wood, with an estrapade above, and a Protestant fastened in it. By this fiendish 
contrivance the victim was alternately lowered into the fire and hoisted out of it. 
The affair was so ordered that when the king stopped before the altar and knelt 
in prayer, the fastenings should give way and the poor sufferer be dropped into< 
the fire and left there, the royal devotions keeping time to the victim's agonies. 
In this same month Francis attempted to abolish the use of the printing press — 
a measure which should have been taken by all persecutors. 

The estrapades produced an effect not only in Paris, but in foreign lands. 
The Lutheran princes of Germany sent letters or messages of remonstrance to 
the king, who replied that he had only been punishing " certain rebels who 
wished to trouble the state under the pretext of religion." Calvin's "Institutes 
of the Christian Religion," which appeared six months later, was dedicated tj 
Francis, and aimed "to relieve the brethren from an unjust accusation," and to 
be the means of "opening to them a shelter" in other lands. The author was 
then but twenty-six, and had already left France, to settle, after a year or two of 
wandering, as theological professor in Geneva. His influence soon became 




JOHN CALVIN. 



341 



342 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



dominant, not only in Switzerland, but among the friends of reform in France. 
His books were read by peasants and nobles alike, and gave definite dogmatic 
character to trie movement. 

SLAUGHTERS IN PROVENCE. 

For trie next ten years there was not 

much persecution ; but in 1545 a hideous 

crusade was directed against the Vaudois 

of Provence (already mentioned) in the 

southeast corner of France. 

The Parliament of Aix had 

'"■■*'"'■■ decreed that "the villages of 

Merindol, Cabrieres, and Les 
Aigues, and all other places that 
were the retreat and receptacle 
of heretics, should be de- 
stroyed ; the houses razed 
to the ground, the forest 
trees cut down, the fruit 
trees torn up by the roots, 
the chief men put to death, 
and the women and chil- 
dren banished forever." 
In this typical sentence 
the character and the 
effects of bigotry are well 
set forth : the fury of anti- 
heretical zeal raged alike 
against human life, in- 
telligence, industry, and 
the very fertility of the 
ground. What mattered 
it that a colony of peace- 
ful and laborious farm- 
ers had caused the desert 
to rejoice and blossom? 
Turn it into a wilderness 
aeain: let no habitation 
HEXRY IL stand, no crops grow, with- 

out the Church's blessing. Such was the spirit of 1545. 

After some hesitation the king assented to this infamous decree, and D'Op- 
plde, a nobleman, was sent with six hired regiments of cutthroats to kill and 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



343 



burn. They carried out their instructions even beyond the letter. One or two 
villages were taken by surprise and mercy shown to none ; the others were 
mostly deserted. In Merindol only an idiot remained ; he was tied to a tree and 
shot. Cabrieres was defended for a day by sixty men, who surrendered on prom- 
ise of safety, and were at once massacred. Thirty women, who had stayed with 
their husbands, were driven into a barn and burned there ; when any tried to 
escape, they were pushed back by the soldiers' pikes. Twenty-two towns and 
hamlets were destrc^ed, with every vestige of civilization. But few of the in- 
habitants escaped across the border. A number, perishing in the hills, begged 
to be allowed to leave the country with only the clothes they wore. The ruth- 
less commander refused. "I know what I have to do with you," he said: "I 
will send every one of you to hell, and make such havoc of you that your 
memory will be cut off forever." Two hundred and fifty were put to death in a 
batch. Six hundred of the strongest young men were sent to the galleys, and 
one-third of these died within a few weeks. 



HENRY II. 



The king, who was not without human feelings, was displeased with these 
severeties. An inquiry was begun some years after, but nothing came of it. 
Henry II. succeeded his father in 1547. His wife was Catherine de Medici, 
afterwards too famous; but he was gov- 
erned by his mistress, Diana of Poitiers, 
a woman old enough to be his mother. 
She and his favorite Montmorency alike 
hated the Reformation, and the conse- 
quences of this hatred were soon manifest 
In January, 1551, a new law was made, 
reviving the old one which condemned 
all heretics to death, and adding several 
unusually sharp provisions. Both the 
state courts and those of the Church re- 
ceived full power to act, so that one might 
catch what the other missed. Those who 
owned or brought in books of the Re- 
formers were liable to heavy penalties. 
All property of refugees was to be con- 
fiscated. The informer was to receive 
one-third of the goods of these people. 
Sentences were to be carried out speedily and without appeal. 

Another edict, introducing the Inquisition, was less successful. The Par- 
liament withheld its assent, and its president was bold enough to use these noble 




ir iuH - til 

CATHERINE DE MEDICI, IN YOUTH. 



N 



344 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY 



words : "Since these punishments on account of religion have bailed, it seems to 
us conformable to the rules of equity and right reason to follow here the foot- 
steps of the early Church, which never employed fire and sword to establish or 
extend itself, but a pure doctrine and an exemplary life. VVe think, therefore, 
that your majesty should seek to preserve religion only by the means b}- which 
it was first established." This was certainly not the teaching of Rome, nor the 

view which prevailed 
jjj anywhere — unless 
|H among the persecuted 
J — then and for a long 
I time after. 

In spite of the new 
jj| law and the means 
H taken to enforce it, the 
(■ new opinions spread in 
Sp France. In 1555 a Re- 
jj formed congregation or 
jj church was organized 
J in Paris, and within 
jj two years the example 
lj was followed in ten 
other cities. Cn the 
night of September 
4th, 1557, the Protest- 
ants were attacked as 
they came out from a 
secret service. Some 
of them cut their way 
through the mob : many 
remained in the build- 
ing, and were with 
difficulty rescued by 
j the police. Seven were 
■ burned soon after: 
others were saved by 
burning of Protestants in paris. foreign intervention. 

On April 3d, 1559, a treaty was signed between France and Spain, which 
bound Henry to imitate the furious course of Philip II. Nine days later the 
king sent letters to the various provinces, saying, "I desire nothing more than 
the total extermination of this sect— to cut its roots up so completely that 
new ones may never be formed Have no pity then, but punish them as 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 345 

they deserve." Yet, a month after, the reformed churches held their first 
national synod in Paris. 

An unduly lenient sentence, condemning four persons to exile only in- 
stead of death, caused a suspicion of unsoundness in one section of the Parlia- 
ment of Paris. The cardinal of Lorraine, after the manner of such dignitaries, 
urged Henry to invite certain senators to a conference, encourage them to speak 
out freely, and then, b}^ a little useful treachery, arrest and punish them on evi- 
dence of their own supplying. " The burning of a few heretic members of 
Parliament," he remarked, "will be a pleasant spectacle to the Duke of Alva and 
other Spanish grandees, who are now in Paris." This advice was followed, and 
.several fell into the trap set for them. Du Bourg went so far as to say, "One 
.sees every day crimes left unpunished, while those who have done no wrong are 
dragged to the stake. It is no light thing to condemn to the flames those 
who in the midst of them invoke Christ's name." He and four others were sent 
to the Bastile. But Henry was not to see their execution. In a tournament the 
lance of a Scottish knight entered his brain, and he died July 10th, 1559, to be 
succeeded by a child. 

THE GREAT FAMILIES. 

To understand the confused events which follow, we must pause to explain 
the condition of France at this juncture, and to introduce some of its chief per- 
sonages. The house of Valois was on the throne ; the next heirs were the 
Bourbons, a name soon to become famous. They were descended from the sixth 
.son of Louis IX. ; Antony, the head of the family, by marrying a niece of 
Francis I., had become king of Navarre. He had called himself a Protestant, 
hut the threats and promises of Philip II. induced him to return to the Roman 
communion. His brother, Louis Prince of Conde, was a stronger character, and 
more useful to the cause of reform. 

The new doctrines, as we have seen, gained their earliest converts in the 
working classes. " Painters, watchmakers, goldsmiths, printers, and others who, 
from their callings, have some mental superiority," says a writer of the other 
party, "were among the first taken in." The accession of the great lords 
changed the face of things, and caused the movement to become no less political 
than religious. Under a strong monarch like Francis I. the nobles were kept 
in their places ; but during the feeble reign of Henry II. corruption came in 
like a flood, the royal authority was despised, and occasion given for personal 
jealousies and ambitions which, not less than opposing principles, were soon to 
fill the realm with disorder, violence, and bloodshed. 

The chief rivalry was between the Bourbons and the Guises. The latter 
house was founded by Claude of Lorraine, who was made Duke of Guise and 
married his daughter to James V. of Scotland. He had six sons, all eager sup- 
porters of Rome ; the two eldest played leading parts in the history of the time. . 



346 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Francis, second Duke of Guise, was an able soldier and a fierce bigot. His brother 
Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, though a coward, was an accomplished scholar, 
courtier, and intriguer. One bold, the other subtle, and both grasping, these 
men became for a time the power behind the throne ; they were close allies of 
Philip II., leaders of the papal party, and foremost in persecution. 

On the other side, with Conde and others, were the three sons of the Mar- 
quis of Chatillon and nephews of the Constable Montmorency. The eldest had 
been made a cardinal at sixteen ; the second, Coligny, in 1556 became Admiral 
of France, an office next to that of Constable. He and his younger brother 
D'Andelot were men of grave and earnest character ; both, as soldiers, had been 
prisoners of war. In the tedium of confinement both had made acquaintance 

with the Scriptures and some works of the 
Reformers ; as a consequence, both, with 
their brother the cardinal, embraced the 
Protestant cause. 

The versified psalms of Clement Marot 
were- to France what those of Sternhold and 
Hopkins were to England, and those of 
Rous, a century later, to Scotland — and per- 
haps somewhat more tunable than either. 
They were much sung in the streets of 
Paris, and the fact alarmed the clergy. 
D'Andelot was accused of taking part in 
these exercises, of protecting ministers of 
the new faith, and of keeping some of their 
books. The king sent for him and asked 
him what he thought of the mass. With 
more frankness than prudence or politeness, 
lie called it "a detestable profanation." Henry accused him of ingratitude, and 
said, "I have given you honors and promotion. You are my servant; you are 
bound to follow my religion." D'Andelot replied that his person and property 
were the king's, but his conscience was his own. Enraged, the monarch caught 
up the first object at hand, flung it at his head, and placed him in confinement. 
The dignitaries of the Church would have made an example of him ; but his 
friends were too powerful, and the times were not yet quite ripe for the burning 
of a prominent nobleman. He was released on the simple condition of witnessing 
a mass in which he took no part. Even for this moderate compliance he was 
blamed by Calvin and other severe religionists. 

FRANCIS 11. 
Francis II., who came to the throne in 1559, was a boy of fifteen, married 
the year before to Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, claimant of the English 




CONDE. 




<UW Sffliltnigunf Sir 5Holojto»bil4(» QOIiOWoll IP S9«rlia 



A LADY OF AMBOISE. 



347 



.348 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

throne, and niece of the Guises. While the Bourbons and Chatillons were at a 
distance, her uncles were at hand, and took charge of her whole administration. 
The nobles of older creation and prior rights, including the great Protestant 
princes, were indignant at this intrusion of men whom they considered parvenus. 
They met at Vendome ; Conde and D'Andelot were for war at once, but Coligny 
and the cooler heads restrained them. It was agreed that the king of Navarre, 
as their natural chief and nearest to the throne, should go to Paris and claim 
his rights. But his weakness was no match for Guise and the cardinal, who 
soon scared him into submission with threats from their ally, Philip II., to 
invade so much of Navarre as had not been previously seized by Spain. 

The new government soon showed its temper. Du Bourg, the judge of 
Parliament arrested some months before, was refused a trial by his peers, enclosed 
in an iron cage, and burned December 23d. His rank, his character, his confession, 
his bearing in confinement, on his pretended trial, and at the stake, placed him 
high on the roll of French martyrs. His execution, as a papist said, "did more 
harm than a hundred ministers could have done by all their preaching." 

Hven apart from this example, the sixteen-months' reign of the boy-king, 
-or rather of the Guises in his name, was the most terrible period France had 
known. The edict of 1551 was revived in all its force, with new provisions 
against the lives of those who attended any private religious meeting, or knew 
■of such and did not report them. Large rewards were offered to informers : 
Chambres Ardentes or courts of burning were founded to make way with Huge- 
nots : some of the methods of the Spanish Inquisition, though happily not its 
forms, were introduced. "In Paris, Bordeaux, Lyons, Grenoble, Dijon, and other 
cities where the Calvinists abounded, private houses were broken into upon the 
slightest suspicion, and whole families hurried to prison ; espionage, pillage, 
confiscations, executions, multiplied day by day." 

Such proceedings, in a civilized land and age, against so large a faction, 
with some of the chief men of France at its head, were not long to be tamely 
borne. Eminent theologians and jurists of the new views, at home, in Switzer- 
land, and in Germany, were asked "whether, provided no violence were offered to 
the king and the lawful magistrates, men might with a good conscience take up 
arms for the safety and liberty of the country, seize Francis of Guise and his 
brother the cardinal, and compel them to resign their usurped authority." 
•Calvin, who always taught non-resistance, answered in the negative ; but others 
counseled revolt, if sanctioned b}^ a prince of the royal blood and by most of 
the states of France. 

The inquirers attached less weight to the second condition than to the first. 
Navarre was of no use ; his brother Conde, the case being put before him, said 
that he did not wish to begin a civil war, but if any one else would give the ris- 
ing a fair start, he would then place himself at its head. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



349 



RENANDIT'S CONSPIRACY. 



Renandit, a man of good family, undertook the task. After vainly seeking 
aid from Elizabeth of England, -who was too prudent to interfere, he carried out 
his mission with great diligence and entire secrecy at home, visiting the leading 
malcontents and stirring up their zeal. A meeting was held at Nantes, February 
ist, 1560, attended by many gentlemen of position and estate, though by none 
of the chief nobles. All agreed to meet in arms at Blois on March 10th, state 
their grievances to the king, and if he refused redress, to seize the two Guises 
and call upon Conde, who was to be at hand. 

The plans were carefully laid and promised well ; but when Tnany are 
parties to a conspiracy, all are seldom to be trusted. A Calvinist lawyer in Paris, . 




CHATEAU OF AMBOISE. 
The scene of dark events in Huguenot history. 



in whom Renandit was obliged to confide, was base enough to send the news to- 
the cardinal. Guise at once removed the court from Blois to Amboise, which had 
a strong castle, and summoned Conde, Coligny, and D'Andelot. They came, 
and Coligny, being asked for advice, said that the way to stop revolt was to grant- 
liberty of worship. Renandit, unwilling to give up his plans, simply postponed 
the attack six days, and notified his friends of the change of date and place. 
But he was again betrayed. Guise, who learned his intentions in detail, prepared 
to meet them: he was defeated, killed in the fight, and his body, according to 



35o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

the statute against traitors, hung and quartered, and its parts exposed with his 
-head in public places of the town. The other conspirators, being met by forces 
greater than they expected, were slain or taken, and this first rising came to 
naught. 

EXECUTIONS AT AMBOISE. 

It was bitterly avenged. Within the next month twelve hundred men were 
hanged, drowned, or beheaded in the small city of Amboise. There was not 
room enough for so many gibbets, so they hung the victims from the castle walls. 
The duke of Guise was at table, when a messenger from another great noble 
•came to ask after his health. "Tell your master that I am well," he said, "and 
report to him the kind of viands I am regaling myself with." As he spoke he 
pointed to the window, where a man of lofty stature and fine appearance was 
then dangling from the bars. 

This brutality was not confined to the commander, nor to the sterner sex. 
Hvery day, at a fixed hour, the ladies of the court, arrayed as for a ball, seated 
themselves at the windows to enjoy the hangings and beheadings which were 
conducted there for the entertainment of the fair. Among them, and in the 
place of honor, was the queen, Mary Stuart, then little past seventeen. Reared 
in this school of tigers, it is no wonder that on her return to her own realm she 
agreed but poorly with the grim Calvinists of Scotland, and that they had little 
love for her. 

Her child-husband, a year younger than she, and feeble in body and in mind, 
was of a less savage temper. It is on record that he once burst into tears and 
said to his uncles, "What have I done to my people, that they hate me so? I 
would like to hear what they have to say. I don't know how it is, but I am told 
it is you the people are so angry at. I wish you would go away, that I might 
learn whether they complain of you or of me." The Guises answered, "If we 
were to leave you, the Bourbons would soon make an end of us." Unscrupulous 
devotion to the interests of their family was indeed a ruling motive with these 
men ; but they — or at least the duke — had another nearly as strong, in fanatical 
attachment to the Church of Rome. As for religion, in the modern sense of the 
word, it is not uncharitable to • assume that they knew very little of it. Both 
were for blood, but that was a soldier's trade. The duke was fearless, and not 
without a sense of honor: the cardinal, while always counseling extremes, took 
great care of his own safety. Anxious that the ladies might miss none of the 
sport, he would sit with them at the windows, explaining details of the execu- 
tions, making jests upon them, and commenting on the impudent obstinacy of 
the victims. 

Sixteen men of rank, leaders in the insurrection, had surrendered on prom- 
ise of safety — a promise it was not thought necessary to keep. At his trial, the 
Baron of Castelnau showed such knowledge and ability that the chancellor, 




THE HANGINGS AT AMBOISE. 



351 



352 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Olivier, inquired with a sneer at what school of theology he had studied. He 
answered by another question : " Do you not remember asking me, when I came 
back from Flanders, how I had passed my time in my imprisonment there ? I 
told you I had been reading the Bible. You approved my studies, advised me 
to attend the assemblies of the Reformed, and expressed a wish that all the 
nobles of France had chosen the better part like me." Olivier had no more to 
say, and the cardinal took up the debate, to be presently worsted. "You see," 
said Castelnau to the duke, "we have the better reasons." "I know nothing of 
arguments," the man of blood and iron replied, "but I know how to cut off 
heads." 

In a vain effort to elicit confessions, the sixteen were put to the torture '. 
they all declared they had risen against the Guises, not against the king. When 
they were condemned for treason, Castlenau scornfully exclaimed, "So the 
Guises are kings of France, then ? They have violated our laws and liberties : 
if it be treason to resist them, proclaim them kings at once." 

Mary Stuart and the court were at the windows as usual, to enjoy the 
beheadings, which for their accommodation took place close by. Castelnau said 
his last prayer and died like a man. Another, Villenorgue, dipped his hands 
in the blood of his friends, raised them aloft, and cried, "Lord, it is the blood of 
Thy children unjustly slain : Thou wilt avenge it! " At this one of the ladies 
ran shrieking from the room : it was the Duchess of Guise. "I have seen the 
blood of the innocent flowing," she wailed : " I fear that cry for vengeance will 
fall heavy on our house." Olivier, the chancellor, took to his bed. The cardi- 
nal came to see him. "You have damned yourself and all of us," the remorseful 
man cried. Two days later he was dead. 




MARY ST O ART. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



WORDS AND BLOWS. 



Ifflll— 



■' I. i»i"ii"iMH.'."«iii!iiiiii|inf 



IJAR from repressing the movement toward liberty, 
the severities at Amboise aroused a fury of re- 
sentment, and the numbers of the Protestants 
grew daily. From this time they began to be 
called Huguenots, a name of obscure and doubtful 
origin, applied at first by their enemies in reproach 
or ridicule. As the stench of the unburied bodies 
drove the court from Amboise, so the savor of 
those evil deeds spread through the land, and the 
Guises found themselves obliged to temporize. 
An assembly of notables was convoked at Fon- 
tainebleau August 21st, 1560. The Bourbons 
were not present, but the Chatillons were, with 
eight hundred of their party. Coligny offered a 
petition from the Protestants of Normandy, pro- 
testing their loyalty and offering to pay double 
taxes if they could have their own places of wor- 
ship and use them undisturbed. It was objected 
to as having no signatures. " For obvious reasons," 
said the admiral; "but fifty thousand can be had 
in a few days." The Duke of Guise answered in 
his own spirit : "And I can as easily get a million 
good Catholics to lead against these fellows, and 
break their heads." But the tide was too stroug 
to be thus checked, and even the cardinal found 
it best to counsel milder measures. No mercy 
should be shown to rebels or traitors, he said, and 
for the king to allow heretical conventicles would 
be to insure his own damnation ; but "as to those 
poor fanatics who, without arms and for fear of 
being damned, went to their preachings and psalm- 

(353) 



354 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY 



singings and things of that sort, since punishment had as }^et accomplished 
nothing, he was of opinion that the king should no longer pursue them in that 
way.' 5 It was agreed that the States-General should meet at Meaux December 




ROCK OF CAYLUS, AN OLD HUGUENOT FORTRESS. 



ioth, and a national council, for a possible reformation of the Church, at Paris 
January 20th. As to the last, the cardinal with an air of great fairness said that 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 355 

"he saw little need of it, but would no); oppose it. He was a cunning knave, and 
could preach almost in the strain of a reformer on occasion. 

Meantime the Prince of Conde was under grave suspicion as the secret leader 
of the late rising, and the almost certain head of others that were to come. 
While he was with the court at Amboise, the cardinal had wished to have him 
arrested and tried ; and he, hearing these rumors, had boldly demanded audience 
of the king, denounced his accusers, whoever they might be, as liars, and flung 
down his gauntlet in challenge to any such. The Duke of Guise, with whatever 
motive, had offered to be Conde's second. Nothing more was done just then; 
but after the assembly in August, the cardinal, whose moderate talk was a mere 
blind, devised what he called a " rat-trap." The States-General were to meet at 
Orleans, a fortified city, instead of Meaux. Large forces were collected there, 
with troops from Spain and Savoy. The king was to present a Confession of 
Faith such as no Protestant could honestly sign ; this was to be passed and made 
a law of France. The precious document was then to be carried about the 
country, and every adult who declined to place his name to it was to be put to 
death at once. 

PLOT AGAINST THE BOURBONS. 

To make this fine plan the more secure, the two Bourbons, as the most 
dangerous men in the kingdom, were to be got rid of beforehand. Working in 
the dark, the cardinal had probably gathered evidence enough against Conde ; as 
for Antony, he, though a king, was of less consequence, and could easil}^ be 
attended to. They were summoned to Orleans. Trusting too much to their 
great name and their royal descent, they went. At Limoges they were met by 
over seven hundred Huguenots of rank, who urged them to head an insurrection, 
and promised to raise a force of sixteen thousand speedily. Conde would have 
done it, but Navarre was still unwilling to appear in arms against the throne. 
Then the prince was entreated to remain with his friends ; but he was too high- 
minded to let his brother go on alone. 

Disregarding all warnings and declining an offered escort, they went to what 
was meant to be their doom. "As they approached Orleans, a vague terror came 
over them. No one came out to meet them. They found the city crowded with 
military. Between two files of soldiers, drawn up as if to guard them as prisoners 
hy the way, they reached the house in which the king was lodged. Its main 
entrance they found closed ; they had to pass in by the wicket. As soon as 
they were in his presence, the king proceeded to accuse Conde of treasonable 
designs upon his person and crown. The dauntless prince flung back the charge 
upon his accusers. "In that case," said Francis, "we shall proceed according to 
the ordinary forms of justice." Conde found himself a prisoner, closely guarded, 
and soon condemned. His haughty spirit disdained to bend. He refused to 
receive a priest who came to celebrate the mass, and said to one who urged his 



35 6 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



submission to the all-powerful uncles of the queen, " My only way of settling 
with them is at the lance's point." 



NARROW ESCAPE OF NAVARRE AND CONDE. 

Antony had been allowed to go, and his remonstrances were treated with 
contempt. Bearing a king's title, he could not be arrested like his brother, or 

executed as his 
brother was to be. 
So the Guises, who 
had their piipil 
thoroughly under 
control, devised a 
plan — the cardi- 
nal's finger in it is 
plain — to attain 
their end without 
public scandal. 
Navarre was to be 
invited to the cabi- 
net of Francis, who 
was then to pre- 
tend to be angry 
and draw his dag- 
ger on the visitor: 
the attendants,, 
watchful of their 
monarch's safety, 
were then to finish 
the work. Such 
methods, long used 
in the politics of 
Italy, were now 
familiar through- 
out Europe, espe- 
cially where the 
intrigues and in- 
terests of Philip 
II. extended. This 
shepherd girl of the Pyrenees.. most zealous Cath- 

olic had a deep and active interest in French affairs, and what he could not 
teach in the way of lying, trickery, and murder was not worth learning. 





COI4GNY AT THE DEATH-BED OF FRANCIS n. 



357 



358 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Navarre had warning of the plot against his life, and neglected a first sum- 
mons from Francis. Another came, and he obeyed. As he placed his foot upon 
the steps, a friendly voice whispered,. " Mount not, sire : you go to perish." He 
turned to his attendant and said, " I go into a place where I know they have 
sworn my death; but my life* shall be dearly sold." But the intended tragedy 
was not enacted. The visitor bore himself too royally, and the boy-king was 
not equal to his part. Guise stood in the antechamber, his hand on his sword- 
hilt, waiting to hear raised voices and the sound of a blow; but he was disap- 
pointed. As Navarre passed out untouched, the duke muttered, "The baby, the 
coward ! He has let the prey go." 

Conde'shead was to fall December ioth, just before the States-General met ; 
"but he was saved by what seemed an interposition of Providence. On Novem- 
ber 17th the king was taken ill. The Guises literally moved heaven and earth 
to prolong his life : the duke swore at the doctors, the cardinal had prayers 
said, masses sung, and processions moving, everywhere. They begged the 
dowager-queen, Catharine de Medici, to agree to anticipate Conde's sentence, if 
not to execute both the Bourbons ; but she had her own ends in view, and refused 
to interfere. The dying Francis sought at first to purchase a reprieve by vows 
such as his directors recommended : he would not spare " mothers, infants, wives, 
any who bore the taint of even the suspicion of heresy." Finding this useless, 
he put up a wiser and more Christian prayer. "Pardon my sins, and impute not 
to me those of my ministers." He died December 5th, and his death was as 
useful as his reign had been pernicious. It changed the situation completely, 
and relieved France, for the time at least, from outrageous and intolerable 
oppression. 

CHARLES IX. AND HIS MOTHER. 

The States-General met December 13th, and sat till the end of January. 
They found the finances in a terrible condition, which they proposed to relieve 
by using the Church's wealth. They urged various reforms, including free 
permission of the Reformed worship, and put on record their conviction that 
another year of persecution would ruin the country.^ The new king, Charles IX., 
being a child of ten years, they would have made Navarre regent, as next to 
the reigning family in blood ; but he had allowed himself to be set aside, and 
Catharine de Medici installed. 

This woman, who for the next twenty years was one of the leading powers 
of Europe, had a curious history and a no less curious character. A pope's 
niece, and married in youth to a king's eldest son, for more than twenty years 
she was apparently content to be a cipher and to see her husband ruled by an 
elderly mistress. Through all those years she was gathering knowledge and 
biding her time : that time had come at last. Greed of the power of which she 
had been so long bereft was her ruling motive. She cared for her sons chiefly 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



359 



for what she might get by them, and used them as tools toward the attainment 
of her purposes. In politics and religion she wavered and swayed between 
the parties, having neither heart nor principle to bind her to either, and ready 
to deceive both in turn. She gained the regency by persuading Coligny and 
D'Andelot that she was a friend to reform, and then promised the clergy to sup- 
port the Church, in return for their assuming a large share of the national debt. 
The estates insisted on a council, or colloquy as it was called, between the 
ministers of both opinions. The news of this disturbed the pope, and Catharine, 
who had not then chosen a side, and was trying to steer a middle course, wrote 




MOUNT ST. MICHEL. 



to him to explain it. "The numbers of those who have separated from the 
Church of Rome," she declared, "are so great, the party has become so poweful 
through the multitude of nobles and magistrates who have joined it, that it is 
formidable in all parts of the kingdom. But among them are no libertines, ana- 
baptists, nor holders of any opinions regarded as monstrous ; all admit the twelve 
articles of the Apostles' Creed as explained by the seven oecumenical councils. 
On this account, many zealous Catholics think that they ought not to be cut 
off from the communion of the Church." She went on to say that " frequent 



3 6o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

conferences between the learned on either side " was the best way to recall 
dissenters, and that to keep others from leaving it was necessary to remove abuses 
and scandals, such as image-worship, private masses, communion in one kind, 
and the use of Latin in the churches. One is almost forced to believe that this 
amazing letter was written for Huguenot eyes, and that she sent another 
privately to the pope to explain her explanation. 

COLLOQUY OF POISSY. 

The colloquy began at Poissy September 8th, 1561. The regent, the king, 
and their court were present, with a great array of clergy. After the proceedings 
were opened, twelve Protestant ministers were admitted. At their head, sent to 
represent Calvin, was Beza, one of the ablest theologians of that school. He 
offered prayer, and then began to state and defend their doctrines. It was the 
first opportunity of the kind the Huguenots had enjoyed, and may be compared 
to the council of Basle, where the Hussite leaders discussed their faith with dig- 
nitaries of the old Church. But the two parties were not here on equal terms, 
and the priests had small idea of pure debate; for when Beza said that Christ's 
real body and blood were as far from the bread and wine as heaven from earth, 
cries of "blasphemy" arose, and some wished to leave the assembly. The Cardi- 
nal of Lorraine took a week to prepare his answer, which convinced all those 
who already held to its two points, the Church's authority and the real presence 
of Christ in the consecrated elements. The bishops cried out that the advocates 
of reform were vanquished and must submit. Beza wished to reply at once, but 
the meeting was adjourned. The pope's emissaries now urged, rightly enough 
from their standpoint, that such public discussions would do more harm than 
good, and that if the debates were carried further, it had better be on a much 
smaller scale. Thus no more definite result was reached than on any similar 
occasion, when each side is perfectly satisfied at the start that it has the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. A few efforts, honest or pretended, 
were made to draw up a formula on which both could agree, but nothing came of 
these. 

At more than one crisis in history, laymen have grasped the idea of tolera- 
tion when divines have missed it. De l'Hopital, who had succeeded Olivier as 
chancellor of France, when opening the States-General in 1560, had called it folly 
to expect differing religions to dwell together in peace. But the progress of 
events had taught him something. At a meeting of notables and deputies in 
the first days of 1562, he used some remarkable language. For a king to lead 
one religious party of his subjects against another, he said, would be "unworthy 
not only of Christianity, but of humanity. Whichever side gained, the victory 
would be as sad for the conquerors as for the conquered. A moral evil will 
never yield to mere physical remedies. Do not waste your time in inquiring 




HUGUENOTS DESTROYING THE IMAGES. 



361 



362 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

which of the two religions is the better. We are here not to establish a dogma 
of faith, but to regulate an affair of state. Ought the new religion to be toler- 
ated, according to the demand of the nobles and the Third Estate ? Must one 
cease to be a good subject when he ceases to worship after the king's fashion? 
Is it not possible to be a good enough subject without being a good Catholic, or 
even a good Christian ? Cannot citizens of different beliefs live in harmony in 
the same state ? These are the questions j^ou are called on to decide." 

It being an assemblage of laymen and not of priests, the far-seeing orator 
carried his point, though against much opposition. On January 17th, 1562, an 
edict of toleration was passed. Under certain restrictions, the chief of which 
excluded them from the limits of the cities, the Protestants were allowed to hold 
their own assemblies, and recognized and protected by the law. 

CONFERENCE OF SAVERNE. 

But the fires of religious strife were not so soon to be extinguished. The 
Huguenots had committed some imprudent and violent acts, seizing a few 
churches, destroying the images and whatever seemed to them to savor of idola- 
try. The Guises and their friends, on the other hand, were not to be reconciled 
to toleration. Born intriguer as he was, the cardinal had already devised a 
scheme to cut off his enemies from any foreign aid in the wars which he foresaw, 
and to put them in a false light before their natural allies, the Lutheran princes 
of Germany. At the colloquy of Poissy, he had tried to entrap Beza and the 
others into a refusal to sign certain articles from the Augsburg Confession, 
which were unlikely to satisfy Calvinists : but Beza had prudently answered that 
he and his friends would consider these if the bishops signed them first. Foiled 
in this effort, the wily prelate reflected on the usefulness of lies when truth was 
not at command, and proceeded to instruct his brother in a part to be carried in 
the scheme. They then invited Christopher, Duke of Wiirtemberg, to a con- 
ference at Saverne. He came in February, 1562, bringing his ablest theologians. 
The cardinal preached two sermons in which these could find nothing to object 
to ; the rough duke, saying that he was a man of war and knew little of such 
matters, opened doctrinal topics, and seemed to agree heartily with his new in- 
structors. Next morning early he awoke his guest to say, ."I could not sleep 
for thinking of our conversation. I told my brother some of it, and he wants 
to talk with you and Brentius." Christopher was pleased, of course. After 
listening to a long exposition of Lutheran doctrine, the cardinal swore by all 
that was holy that he agreed with every word of it. His Church had gone too 
far about the Real Presence. Melanchthon and the rest were quite right; but 
he could not tell all he knew at home on account of the weaker brethren. De- 
lighted, the Germans urged him to work for a pure gospel and religious peace 
and unity. "I will," said he: "I mean to. But those pig-headed Calvinists are 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 363 

hard to manage. If they would only have accepted the Augsburg Confession 
as a basis, I could have got the bishops to sign it." Thus he talked till the 
honest Wiirtemberger went home satisfied that the cardinal and his brother were 
sound in the faith, and that the Huguenots were dangerous and impracticable 
people. And thus the wretched gulf was deepened between Calvinists and Luth- 
erans, so that the German princes would hardly ever help their brethren across 
the French or Dutch border, regarding them as of an alien sect, nearly or quite 
as far from the truth as Rome. If Protestants had been united, the area of 
Protestantism in western and central Europe would to-day be far larger than 
it is. 

MASSACRE AT VASSY. 

The duke and the cardinal also turned homeward, chuckling over their easy 
victory. They stopped at Joinville to visit their mother, who was a Bourbon, 
though no friend of Navarre and Conde. She complained of a Reformed con- 
venticle that had risen at Vassy : it was nine miles away, but even the rumor 
of so much plebeian psalm-singing shocked her Catholic and aristocratic nerves. 
On the morning of Sunday, March 1, her sons, with a large retinue, were rid- 
ing toward Paris, when they heard bells ringing. "What is that for?" they 
asked. "The Huguenot service," they were told. The duke became furious. 
"We will Huguenot them," he cried. "March ! We must take a part in that 
meeting." The humble worshippers were gathered in a large barn, and their 
minister had begun his sermon, when Guise and his men rushed in, using their 
weapons freely. Some of the congregation tried to escape by the roof, and were 
picked off from outside: one man boasted that he had "brought down half a 
dozen of those pigeons." Sixty were killed outright, over two hundred wounded. 
The minister, his head and shoulder bleeding from sabre strokes, was dragged 
before the duke, who called him a seducer, a teacher of sedition, the cause of all 
this bloodshed — it was the sheep biting the wolves again — and ordered him to 
be hanged at once ; but the order was not carried out. 

If the cardinal took no part in this butchery, he did nothing to hinder it. 
He was resting outside, when his brother brought him the pulpit Bible, saying, 
"Here, look at one of their cursed books." The churchman, who had all the 
learning of his family, ran his eye over the title. "Why, there is no great harm 
in that: it is the Bible." "The Bible!" the duke roared. "Isn't it fifteen 
hundred years since Christ died ? And that book was only made last year : 
look at the date. Call that thing the Bible ! " The cardinal said carelessly to a 
bystander, "My brother is in error." The duke sent for the judge of the dis- 
trict: " Why have you allowed this sedition-shop?" The magistrate referred 
to the edict of January 17th, six weeks before. "It is a damnable edict!" 
Guise cried: "this sword shall cut it to pieces!'' In fact, he had already 
done so. 




CHRISTOPHER, DUKE OF WURTEMBERO, EXPOUNDING THE LUTHERAN EOCTRINE TO 
THE DUKE OF GUISE AND CARDINAL LORRAINE. 



364 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 365 

The news of this massacre spread everywhere, and excited varying feelings. 
When the Duke of Wurtemberg heard it, his confidence in the sound Christian 
character and peaceful temper of the Guises was perhaps modified ; but he may 
have thought that the Huguenots of Vassy had deserved their fate for being un- 
willing to subscribe to the Augsburg Confession. Almost everywhere points 
of creed were still valued above human lives. 

The French Protestants, being the injured party, felt much as we would in 
such a case — except that we might leave vengeance to the law, whereas their 
laws were mainly with the strong arm. Pictures of the outrage, widely circu- 
lated, helped to rouse their fury. Equally natural, though harder for us to com- 
prehend, was the exultant and fiendish joy of the old party. Though Guise 
afterwards insisted that what he did at Vassy was the result of a sudden impulse 
and not of a preconceived plan, he had rightly calculated on the support of half 
France. He now approached Paris like an ancient emperor returning from 
glorious victories. "His entry into the city was a triumphal ovation. On his 
right hand rode the Marshal St. Andre, on his left the constable ; more than 
twelve hundred noblemen and gentlemen followed in his train. The mayor of 
the city met him at the gate of St. Denis, and presented him with a congratu- 
latory address. The assembled multitudes rent the skies with their acclamations, 
hailing him as the champion of the faith " 

The regent, offended at this bold law-breaker, summoned him to Monceaux, 
where the court then was ; but he would not go. Deputies of the Reformed 
hastened there to ask her protection. They showed her a list of over two thou- 
sand congregations, and said they could raise fifty thousand men. Still in doubt 
which side to take, but justly dreading the Guises most, she invited Conde to 
Fontainebleau, and would have put herself and her son in his hands. He made 
the mistake of his life in delaying to accept the offer ; for whoever had charge 
of the king's person possessed a vast advantage over the other side. This 
advantage Guise was quick to grasp. When Catherine refused to move to Paris, 
the duke roughly said that she could do as she pleased, but the king should go 
with him. Yielding to force, she was again helpless in the lawless hands that 
were stronger than law. 

OUTRAGE BREEDS OUTRAGE. 

The massacre at Vassy was but the beginning of similar scenes. At 
Chalons, Tours, and elsewhere, Papists attacked Protestants ; in a short time 
three thousand were said to have been slain. Nor were the violences all on 
one side : those of the new faith rose against their enemies, and not always in 
self-defense. Four years before this time Beza had placed their numbers at four 
hundred thousand, and they were making converts every day. They were 
strongest in the south and about Orleans, and numerous in Normandy and Bur- 
gundy ; Picardy and Paris were the parts most bitter against them. "For weeks 



3 66 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY 



and months," says one of their historians, "the blindest, wildest, bloodiest fanat- 
icism ran riot over France. Where the Hnguenot:s had power, the Catholic wor- 
ship was abolished. The priests were driven away or killed; the churches were 
sacked, their altars overturned, their images broken, their relics scattered and 
defiled, their baptismal fonts turned to the vilest uses. The shrines of saints, 
the tombs of kings, whatever monument was venerable by age or association, 
were marked for ruin. The ashes of Irenaeus were flung into the Rhine, those 
of St. Martin of Tours into the Loire : the sepulchres of Louis XL at Cleri, of 
Richard Coeur de Lion at Rouen, of William the Conqueror at Caen, were rifled 
and desecrated. The Catholics had no churches of their opponents to pillage, 




CHATEAU D'ARQUE-\ 

no images of theirs to break : their wrath directed itself not against dead monu- 
ments, but against living men. In the north, spurred on by the priests, and encour- 
aged by a terrible edict of the Parliament of Paris, which doomed every Huguenot 
to death, and called upon the faithful everywhere to rise and execute that doom 
without form of law, it was a frightful havoc that they wrought. We read of a 
stream of Huguenot blood running in one place nearly a foot deep." 

Open war could hardly be worse than these irregular and lawless horrors ; 
and war was inevitable. Admiral Coligny, the best and ablest man in France, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 367 

was reluctant to leave his peaceful retreat at Chatillou. A proved soldier and 
firm patriot, lie dreaded the desolations of civil strife ; an instructed disciple of 
Calvin, he more than disliked to mix the sword of the Spirit with earthly weap- 
ons. His brave and faithful wife decided his course. He asked her, "Are you 
ready to hear of our defeat, to see your husband condemned and executed as a 
rebel, and your children disgraced and ruined, begging their bread of their ene- 
mies?" She answered, "Go, in God's name." He joined Conde at Meaux, with 
a force like Zisca's Taborites or Cromwell's Ironsides : they had their chaplains, 
their religious exercises, their daily instruction in faith as well as arms. 

Coligny would have marched at once on Paris ; but Conde was the general- 
in-chief, and the whole summer and fall were spent in negotiations and prepara- 
tions. Meantime the mutual slaughter went on in the various provinces. Mont- 
luc was sent to ravage Guienne in the southwest. Years after, without the least 
remorse, he wrote an account of his first exploits on this expedition. "I got 
two hangmen, whom they called my lackeys, because they were always at my 
heels. I was determined to use all possible severity, for I knew gentle means 
would never reclaim these hardened scoundrels. At St. Mezard three prisoners 
were brought to me bound in the churchyard, by a stone cross which they had 
broken. I seized one by the collar with harsh words. 'Ah, sir,' he cried, 
'have mercy on a poor sinner!' 'What?' said I in a great rage; 'have 
mercy on you, a villain who had no respect for the king? ' With that I pushed 
him roughly to the ground, so that his neck fell exactly on the broken cross, 
and called on the hangman to strike with his axe. The word and the blow 
came together : off went the fellow's head, and with it another half foot of the 
cross. The other two I hanged on an elm close by. This was my first act after 
leaving home." 

Such were the manners of gentlemen and soldiers, or some of them, in the 
year of grace 1562. Montluc evidently thought he had done a fine thing; and 
so did the pope, who wrote him a letter of thanks for many similar barbarities, 
and the home government, which made him a marshal of France. 

On the other side, Des Adrets was harrying the Catholics of Dauphin}', in 
the east. His name became a terror; none could stand before him, and cities 
made haste to open their gates at his summons. One specimen of his temper 
will suffice. After taking a castle and butchering most of its defenders, he 
reserved a few for his evening amusement. Seated on the top of a high tower, 
lie made the wretches, one by one, take a short run and then jump to certain 
death. The last made three starts, and each time stopped on the edge. "Bah !" 
said the conqueror, "you are a coward." The man turned like a flash, and said: 
"Baron, brave as you are, I will give you ten trials to do it in." His wit and 
spirit saved his life. Not only Coligny, but Conde too, was instructed enough 
to see that such excesses as those of Des Adrets brought no credit to the cause 




MONTLUC SLAYING PRISONERS AT ST. MEZARD. 



368 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 369 

of reform, and had better be left to trie Papists. They blamed him for his cruel- 
ties, and he afterwards left their party in disgust. 

Coligny objected, on principle, to receiving foreign aid, until he saw that 
Guise was drawing troops from Spain and Switzerland. The English queen, 
who always drove a sharp bargain with her allies, promised six thousand men 
and a supply of cash in exchange for Havre, a valuable port on the Channel ; 
and D' Andelot recruited in Germany a body of heavy cavalry to set over against 
the Swiss mercenaries. Paris was reinforced before Conde was ready to attack it, 
and there was no open action till December 18th. Then the armies met near 
Dreux, fifty miles west of the capital. 

BATTLE OF DREUX. 

For two hours they stood looking on each other, without moving. The old 
Constable Montmorency was on one side, his two nephews on the other; and 
many families of minor note must have been likewise divided and opposed. 
Guise had nineteen thousand men, five-sixths of them infantry; the Huguenots 
had eight thousand horse, and but five thousand foot. The battle raged for 
seven hours, and at first was contested with equal stubbornness. Then the roy- 
alist centre and right wing gave way ; Conde broke and drove the Swiss, and 
Coligny with the Germans pressed Montmorency hard. Of the so-called trium- 
virs or chiefs of the old party, the marshal, St. Andre, was killed, the constable 
wounded and a prisoner. His son begged the duke to rescue him, and received 
the answer, "Not yet." Guise showed himself the best general there. Holding 
his division together, and biding his time till the enemy's cavalry were scattered 
in pursuit, he at last shouted, "Come on, the day is ours," and made a charge 
which fulfilled the words. The admiral and his brother were driven back, and 
Conde was made prisoner. He was treated like a prince, and lay that night — 
though not to sleep — in the same bed with his captor. 

Antony of Navarre was not in the fight. He had been won over — not for 
the first time — by the enemy, and killed in besieging Rouen, which was held by 
his brother's English allies. His son was destined to become the leader of the 
cause he had deserted, and one of the most famous kings of France. 

AN INCIDENT. 

At the siege of Rouen occurred one of the most remarkable escapes, or 
series of escapes, recorded anywhere. Francis Civile, an officer of the garrison, 
was shot in the head while standing on the ramparts ; he fell, and was buried 
with others. His servant, on hearing this, wished to take the body home. 
Montgomery, the Scottish knight who had killed Henry II. in the tournament 
three years before, was in command of the town : he led the servant to the place. 
The pit was opened and a number of bodies disinterred, but that of Civile was 




BURYING THI? DEAD AFTER THE BATTLE OF DREUX 



37o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 371 

not found among, them. They were covered up again : the faithful valet went 
off in dismay, but returned to take a last look. Near the pit he saw a hand 
protruding from the earth ; on one finger sparkled his master's diamond ring. 
He made haste 'to dig up the body, found it yet warm, and carried it to a hospital. 
The surgeons, who had more than they could do, would not touch such a hope- 
less case. The servant conveyed Civile to an inn, dressed his wound, and with 
much labor brought him back to consciousness. While he lay helpless, the 
city was taken and sacked by Bourbon's soldiers, who threw him out of a window. 
He fell on a heap of manure beneath, and lay there three days, again supposed 
to be dead, and really very near it, till his brother found means to carry4iis sense- 
less form out of Rouen. After all these strange experiences, he received medical 
aid and proper care ; and he was alive forty years after, when the historian 
Thuanus (de Thou) wrote his story. 

DEATH OF GUISE. 

After his victory at Dreux, Guise besieged Orleans, which had become the 
stronghold of the Huguenots, and was now held by D'Andelot. Conde was a 
prisoner, and Coligny was raising troops in Normandy. The southern suburb 
of Orleans was taken: the city seemed doomed, and with it the cause. All 
was ready for an assault to be made on February 19th, 1563 ; but on the evening 
before, as the duke was riding to his quarters, chatting with a friend, he was 
shot from behind by a Huguenot named Peltrot. He cried, "They owed me 
this!" Indeed, from the standpoint of his party, such actions were to be not only 
excused but praised. The assassin risked and lost his life to deliver France 
from a tyrant, and the Protestants from their most terrible foe. 

Guise lingered six days, and they were the most creditable of his life. His 
approaching end raised, calmed, and purified his thoughts; whatever nobleness 
was in his character came out as it had seldom done before. If we may believe 
the chroniclers, he urged his eldest son, then a boy of thirteen, not to avenge 
his murder, and to take warning by his example. It was all in vain, for the 
young duke was destined to repeat his father's career and to meet a similar fate. 
More effectual was his advice to the regent to make peace at once : this she was 
well disposed to follow. 

Conde and the Constable Montmorency, each lately held prisoner by the 
other's friends, arranged the preliminaries. Seventy-two Protestant ministers, 
meeting at Orleans, wished to make no concessions, and insisted on the burning 
of "all atheists, libertines, anabaptists, and disciples of Servetus," who had him- 
self been burned for heresy at Geneva in 1553. Conde brushed these bigoted 
suggestions aside with contempt, and on March, 18th, 1563, the Edict of Amboise 
proclaimed partial toleration. It allowed every Frenchman "to live at liberty in 
his own house, without being forced or constrained for conscience's sake;" but it 




THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SIEGE OF ROUEN. 



372 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



373 



restricted the public worship of the Huguenots, aud forbade it in Paris. A peace 
of four years' duration followed, marred by the intrigues of Philip II., and broken 
by frequent violences and riots, in which those of "the new religiou" were 
usually the chief sufferers. 




CHAPTER XXV. 




THE QUEEN OE NAVARRE. 

HE little kingdom of Navarre, including the 
principality of Beam and five counties, lay- 
on both sides of the Pyrenees; but in 15 15 
the southern portion was annexed to Spain, 
which in after years often threatened the 
remainder. More than once its sovereignty 
passed to new hands through failure of a 
male heir. Catherine, the heiress of the 
house of Foix, famous in the Albigensian 
wars, was married to a D'Albret in 1491. 
Her son Henry, who lived till 1555, 
espoused Margaret of Valois, the pious sister of Francis 
I., who was half a Protestant. At their court, as has 
been mentioned, Farel, Lefevre, and other early Reform- 
ers found refuge and welcome. Their only child was 
Jeanne D'Albret, born in 15 18 and married at twenty 
to Antony of Bourbon. A woman of strong character and unusual attainments, 
she became a Huguenot in 1560, as a result of careful and dispassionate study. 
On her husband's death, two years later, she established the new worship, and 
then or later suppressed that of the Catholics in her dominions. A papal legate 
was sent ; she refused to receive him. He wrote her a threatening letter ; she 
replied in extremely plain language, saying : " I use no compulsion, and condemn 
no one to death or imprisonment, penalties that are the nerves and sinews of a 
system of terror. I blush for you when you falsely say that so many atrocities 
have been committed by those of our religion. Purge the earth first from the 
blood of so many just men shed by you and yours. Your words are not sur- 
prising, considering whence they come; but they are far from suiting me. Use 
other language, or, better still, be silent." 

Much more of the same sort she wrote to the amazed cardinal. In October, 
1563, the pope summoned her to Rome, on pain of excommunication and out- 
lawry. She appealed to Catherine de Medicis, who made Gregory understand 
that he had gone much too far, since in France he had no authority over kings 
or queens, and it was not for him to give away their dominions. The pope took 
his snubbing meekly, and rescinded his hasty action. After this Philip II. set 
(374) 




PREPARING FOR THE SIEGE OF ORLEANS. 



175 



376 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

on foot a plot to seize Jeanne and her children, carry them to Spain, and have her 
condemned by the Inquisition ; but she heard of. it, and took refuge in a strong 
castle. She worked for seven years on a code of laws for her little kingdom ; it 
was published in 1571, remained in force for more than two hundred years, and 
showed her to be, as some have claimed, "the wisest and most enlightened sover- 
eign of her age." Several of its provisions equalled or surpassed the best legis- 
lation of later times ; thus begging was forbidden, needy widows and orphans 
provided for, education made a public charge, murder alone punished with death, 
interments kept apart from towns and churches, the sale of public offices (which 
went on openly in France for another century or two) abolished, and all subjects 
regarded as equal before the law. 

The religious provisions of this code made a nearer approach to toleration 
than was then customary. It seems monstrous in modern eyes that all were 
obliged, under penalties, not only to attend the Reformed services, but to partake 
regularly of the communion ; but nowhere, then and long after, was any divorce 
between Church and State dreamed of; everywhere the civil authorities were 
thought responsible for order and conformity in spiritual things. In Navarre no 
one could be executed, or even tried, for heresy. The last vestiges of Roman 
worship had been suppressed in 1569, because the priests, previously allowed in 
a few districts, had stirred up sedition. The property of the Church was now 
devoted, in equal parts, to education, charity, and the support of the new religion. 
The Bible was translated into the dialects of Beam and Gascony, and a ministry 
supplied through a seminary at Orthez, with funds for fifty students of divinity. 
Calvinism was now well provided for in the south of France. 

YOUNG HENRY. 

The birth and rearing of him who was to be Henry IV. of France were as 
remarkable as his later career. His two older brothers had died in infancy 
through the folly of those to whom they were entrusted. Old Henry, who wanted 
an heir — "no peevish boy, nor whimpering, whining girl" — insisted that his 
daughter, during her throes of labor, should sing an old song of the country • 
and so she did, not omitting one of the many stanzas. Then he gave her a gold 
box containing his will, and took away the child. Its lips were rubbed with gar- 
lic, a few drops of Gascon wine put in its mouth ; at this it raised its head and 
swallowed them eagerly. "Ha!" the king cried, "thou shalt be a true Bearnois!" 
The boy was brought up in the mountains after the customs of the country, 
with the peasants and like a peasant. Thus trained for future tasks, he grew 
strong and active. Gay and handsome, precocious and attractive, much of his 
childhood was spent at the French court. In 1565, when he was eleven, he over- 
heard a conference between the regent and the infamous Duke of Alva, who 
advised the taking off of the chief Huguenots; "for one salmon," said he, "is 




ASSASSINATION OF GUISE, BY JEAN PELTROT. 



377 



378 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

worth a hundred frogs." The boy took care that his mother should hear of this, 
and she never forgot the warning. At thirteen he returned to her, popular, 
accomplished, almost fall grown. A magistrate wrote: "I shall hate the new 
religion all my life for having carried him off from us. Two astrologers here 
declare that he will some day be one of the greatest kings of Europe," 

His gifts were soon to be needed. Dreading the continual intrigues of Philip 
II., Coligny hatched a plot to seize the young king at Meaux; it miscarried, and 
a second civil war began. Conde marched on Paris, and on November ioth, 
1567, met a force much larger than his own in the indecisive battle of St. Denis, 
in which the old Constable Montmorency was mortally wounded. The sultan's 
ambassador, seeing how well the Huguenots fought, exclaimed: "If my master 
had six thousand men like these, he could conquer all Asia." To gain time, the 
regent made peace four months later ; but toward the end of summer she sent 
out troops to seize Conde, with Coligny, who was visiting him at Noyers in Bur- 
gundy. A royalist officer, who disliked the treacherous business on which he 
was employed, gave them opportunity to escape with their families. Traversing 
rough mountain paths, and crossing the Loire by a dangerous ford, they in Sep- 
tember, 1568, reached Rochelle on the west coast, which from this time was the 
stronghold of their party. There they were soon joined by the queen of Navarre 
and her son, then nearly fifteen. Conde offered to give up the command to his 
nephew, but Jeanne refused, saying to her son: "You have ceased to be a child, 
you are now to be a man. Europe is watching you. Go, and under your uncle 
learn to obey, that it may be yours some day in your turn to command." 

BATTLE OF JARNAC— DEATH OF CONDE. 

The third war now began. The edicts of toleration were repealed, the 
exercise of any form of worship except that of Rome was forbidden on pain 
of death, and the Calvinist ministers were given fifteen days to leave France. 
The king's army was nominally commanded by his brother, the Duke of Anjou, 
a boy of seventeen, who was guided by Marshal Tavannes. This skilful com- 
mander outgeneralled Conde, separated him from his reinforcements, and forced 
an action near Jarnac on the Charante river, March 13th, 1569. Conde's leg 
was broken by a kick from the horse of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld, who rode 
beside him. With the bone protruding through his boot, he called on his 
friends to strike for Christ and their country, and gallantly led his last charge. 
He was soon unhorsed, and fighting on his knee. Says an old chronicler, 
" Around him was the bitterest and most obstinate contest that ever was seen, 
it was thought, during the civil wars. One old man, La Vergne, fell with fifteen 
of his descendants in a heap around him. But what could two hundred and fifty 
gentlemen do, opposed to two thousand in front, with twenty-five hundred German 
reiter on their right and eight hundred lances on their left, but die ? — as they 




DEATH OF CONDE. 



379 



380 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

did, two-thirds of them, on the spot " Conde gave up his sword to a gentleman 
named D'Argence, who had him carried to the woods near by and laid carefully 
on the grass with his back against a tree. He was talking -to a number of 
royalist officers who had gathered about him, when a captain of Anjou's Swiss 
guard rode up and shot him through the head. Thus perished as gallant a 
prince as ever drew sword for the right. Had his ability equalled his spirit, 
France might have had a different history. His murderer was never punished, 
nor did young Anjou even blame the dastardly deed. By his orders the prince's 
body, slung across a pack-horse, was borne into Jarnac and jeered at by the 
soldiers. It was afterwards given to his nephew, and buried in a tomb of his 
family at Vendome. 

Though the Huguenots had lost only their leader and the advance-guard, 
their spirits were low as Coligny and his brother drew them off to Cognac. Here 
the Queen of Navarre, who was no mean orator, hastened to join them, with 
Henry and his cousin, young Conde. In a glowing speech she pronounced the 
eulogy of the heroic dead, raised the drooping courage of the troops, and offered 
her son and her nephew to carry on the work to which she pledged her life. 
With one accord the admiral, the nobles, and the whole army saluted the Prince 
of Beam as their chief, and swore fidelity to him. Thus, when little over fifteen, 
he was placed in the high position which he was to fill so well, and entrusted 
with the defense of those liberties to which he was never false at heart. A man 
of meaner birth, whatever his capacity, could not have ruled the barons. Coligny 
had experience, character, prudence, and fidelity, but those who were his equals 
in rank would never submit to his ascendancy. Henry of Navarre they cheer- 
fully owned as their superior, for he was of royal blood, the equal of the king's 
brothers, and but three steps from the throne. 

After the battle of Jarnac Pius V. wrote to Charles IX. in these words : " If 
your majesty continues to pursue openly and hotly the enemies of the Catholic 
religion, even to their extermination, be assured the divine aid will not be want- 
ing. It is only by the entire destruction of the heretics that you can restore the 
ancient worship to your noble realm." The sentiments of the age were warlike and 
intolerant, but the Church should have been a little ahead of the age in wisdom 
and humanity. On the contrary, the alleged Vicar of Christ was constantly 
approving massacres and crying for more bloodshed. 

The chief hindrance to any permanent peace in France was this continual 
outside interference from the pope, and much more from a monarch even more 
Catholic than the pope, Philip II. of Spain. The difficulties of the Huguenots 
arose from their divided counsels, their need of foreign allies, their lack of funds, 
and the consequent impossibility of keeping together, for any length of time, a 
force sufficient to meet that of the king. On the other hand, the royalists were 
weakened by their own mutual jealousies and intrigues. The queen-mother hated 








THE QUEEN OF NAVARRE ENCOURAGING HER TROOFS. 



381 



382 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

the Guises (with reason), and wished to keep them down. In retaliation, the Car- 
dinal of Lorraine poisoned the king's mind against his brother, who was general- 
in-chief. The Duke of Anjou, nettled at this, and anxious to show that nothing 
could de done without him, was slack in his operations ; or when he was zealous, 
his measures were made of no effect by secret orders from the king. Again and 
again, in their times of weakness and discomfiture, the small Protestant armies 
might have been crushed or greatly damaged, if their enemies had been united 
in heart and will. 

It was largely through these dissensions that a force of German auxiliaries 
was enabled to march across France, and effect a junction with the Huguenots 
on June 23d. Their general died on the way, leaving his command to Mansfeldt, 
and his loss was followed by a greater, that of the brave and faithful D'Andelot. 
The Queen of Navarre decorated the visiting chiefs, among whom was the 
greatest and noblest man of that troubled time, William of Orange. But the 
chief effect of all this was to show that the Protestants of France were not with- 
out friends abroad. 

BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. 

Young Navarre fleshed his sword in a severe skirmish at La Roche Abeille, 
leading a gallant and successful charge. The royalists now adopted the method 
of tiring out their foes, drawing off when they were strong, and gathering again 
later. Poitiers was besieged, and successfully defended by the young Duke of 
Guise and his brother — two boys oppressed by hereditary honors, and coining to 
the front like Anjou, Navarre, and Conde's son, at an age when they should have 
been at school. The battle of Moncontour was fought October 3d, 1569, and lost 
within an hour. The Calvinists resisted a first charge but feebly ; under a 
second their ranks gave way. Coligny's jaw was broken by a pistol-ball, so that 
he could not shout the words of command ; it was the same sort . of wound that 
had disabled Montmorency at Dreux, near seven years before. The admiral was 
forced to retreat with heavy loss, leaving his wounded, his artillery, and his bag- 
gage to the enemy. But his prudence had saved the precious life of Henry, the 
nominal general-in-chief. The boy cried with rage when sent to the rear and 
forbidden to take part in the battle. He watched it from a hill, and wished to 
engage at a moment when he might have changed the fortune of the day. 

Rightly or wrongly, Coligny bore the blame of this defeat. An old historian 
says that " he was abandoned by his officers, his nobles, and all save one woman, 
who bravely advanced to hold out her hand to the afflicted and assist in retrieving 
the affairs of the army." The heroic Queen of Navarre assured him of her con- 
fidence, and pawned her crown jewels to raise funds for the cause, while the 
quarrels of the royalists enabled the admiral to gather the remains of his army 
and prepare for another campaign. 




BATTLE OF MONCONTOUR. 



383 



384 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The seat of war was now transferred to the south. An army overran Na- 
varre, practicing the usual cruelties, and taking every strong place but one : the 
Calvinist lords of the country in vain opposed its progress. Jeanne sent Mont- 
gomery from Rochelle with a few horsemen ; he eluded the troops sent against 
him, collected a force, joined the barons, raised the siege of Navarreins, 
defeated the royalists, and took their general prisoner. Nearly at the same time 
Coligny descended from the mountains of Languedoc, made his way by forced 
marches into Burgundy, and with six thousand men confronted twice that number 
under Marshal de Cosse. Being ill, he was obliged to leave the command to 
Prince Henry, who was in his element when heading a charge. On June 25th, 
1570, he defeated the royalists at Arnay-lo-Duc. This he afterwards called " my 
first exploit of arms," disregarding the skirmish a year before. 

A HOLLOW PEACE. 

Alarmed by these losses, the king and his advisers inclined to peace. It 
was concluded at St. Germain-en-Laye early in August, on terms very favorable 
to the Huguenots. The free exercise of their religion was granted, except at 
court, with a general amnesty ; their confiscated estates were restored ; they were 
declared eligible to all offices, and received the government of Rochelle and 
three other towns, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite, for the next two years. 
In October Charles IX., who was now twenty, married Elizabeth of Austria, amid 
general rejoicings. But no new queen could hope to gain an influence rivalling 
that of Catherine de Medicis. Among the confusions and rivalries of these 
unhappy years her dark and subtle policy mainly guided the destines of France, 
and she would have been glad to allow no power but her own. 

The history of political intrigues is less edifying even than that of doubtful 
wars. One feels that men whose ideas cannot be reconciled and who hate each 
other might better be honestly fighting in the field than exchanging visits and 
courtesies, dancing at the same balls, pretending to be friends, and all the time 
trying to ruin one another. Bat the latter has usually been the way of courts. 
During the two years of peace two parties sprang up in France. The Extrem- 
ists, headed by the young Duke of Guise, who inherited his father's ideas and 
qualities, were in the confidence and pay of Philip II. Other Catholics, who hated 
this foreign meddling, wished to join hands with the Protestants at home and in 
the Netherlands against Spain, or at the least to resist its influence and have no 
more civil wars. Montmorency, the late constable's son, was the chief of these; 
their adviser was the Chancellor De l'Hopital, who had long since shown himself 
a wide-minded statesman and a friend of toleration. Between these factions 
France was to be divided for nearly twenty years. 

In the supposed interest of peace, a marriage was arranged between Henry 
of Navarre and Margaret, the king's sister. Much against her will, Jeanne went 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 385 

to Blois to settle details with Catherine. She had a wretched experience there. 
The loose manners of the place shocked her modesty ; she complained that it 
was "the most vicious and corrupt court that could be imagined," and that her 
sister and cousin had lost all sense of religion. As for the king, his amusements 
would not bear putting on paper. "I would not for the world," she wrote her 
son, " that you should stay here." She was happily unaware that Henry's morals 
were to conform rather to the practices of other monarchs than to the require- 
ments of the catechism. 

The two dowager-queens had not a sentiment in common, and agreed like 
oil and water. Each insisted that the young couple should reside with her and 
follow her way of worship. The pope objected to the union, and so did many 
others. But the young king overbore all opposition. Jeanne went to Paris to pre- 
pare for the wedding ; there she was seized with illness, and made a most Christian 
end on June 8th, 1572. Several Calvinist writers ascribed her death to poison; 
but this charge had no better warrant than the bad repute of her enemies. The 
families of Valois and Guise were capable of any wickedness : Coligny's elder 
brother, the cardinal of Chatillon, while an envoy in England, was poisoned 
by his servant, and this was but one case among many. But it is probable that 
the best woman of her time came to the death she welcomed by the visitation of 
God and not of man. 




CHAMBER OF HORRORS, TIME OF THE INQUISITION. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



ST. BARTHOLOMEW. 




ENRY, now king of Navarre, and Margaret of 

Valois, were married in Paris on August 

18th, 1572. Four days later, in the same 

city, the most famous massacre in history 

began. Historians have toiled to unravel 

the hideous web of hypocrisy and treachery 

which connected the two events. In those 

days the children of great families were 

more apt to be trained in crime than in 

virtue. Nothing was too bad for Guise and his 

associates, for Anjou and his mother ; but the 

king's consent had first to be obtained. The way 

in which this was done is partly made clear by 

memoirs of the time, including the confession — not intended as such — of one of 

the chief criminals. Cut it as short as we may, the necessary explanation will 

take us some distance back. 

Charles IX. was not without generous impulses, and made some efforts to 
behave like a king ; but if he had any native strength of character, it must have 
perished under the tutelage of a mother without heart or principle. As he often 
complained, he was worse taught than many of his valets. Nervous, excitable, 
and wholly ignorant of restraint, he was often the sport of his passions, and 
usually the tool of vile advisers. It was. to his credit that he seemed to form a 
real respect and affection for Coligny, the best man in France. At their meeting 
in the summer of 1571, he would not let the admiral kneel, but seized him by 
the arm, saying, "I hold you now, and you shall not leave me ; I cannot spare 
you. This is the happiest day of my life." Thenceforth he often sought his 
new friend's advice, and it was given frankly, with wisdom and to the point. 
Coligny was of course a warm admirer of William of Orange, who had done 
more for civil and religious liberty than any other man alive or dead. He hated 
Spain and Rome ; he knew that the interests of Protestantism throughout Europe 
vere one ; he was heart and soul with his cousin Montmorency and the other 
Catholic liberals, in their plan of union against the common enemy. Apart 
from the religious question, this was the obvious interest of France, and so the 
386 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



387 



admiral told the king. A treaty with England was signed; negotiations were on 
foot with the Dutch and German states ; reinforcements were actually sent to 
William ; all seemed ripe, or nearly so, for a breach with Spain. 

The Spanish party saw all this, and raged inwardly. The queen-mother 
saw it, and trembled for her power. She had tried the Huguenot leaders, and 
they were too strict for her taste, More pagan than Roman, she preferred Rome 
to Geneva. But personal interests were always weightiest with her. Jealous of 
the new intimacy, she one day asked the king, in a sneering tone, what he learned 
in these endless conferences. His reply might well be fatal to his instructor : "I 
have learned that my mother is my enemy." 

After meditating on this rebuff, she followed Charles to one of his rural 
retreats, beset him with tears and reproaches, warned him of the consequences of 
his course, and asked him, if he persisted 
in it, to send her back to Italy. The weak 
youth yielded for the moment, but soon fell 
again under the sway of the larger mind. 
At a cabinet council there was fierce debate 
over a force that had been sent to Holland 
and waylaid by Alva. Coligny 
urged his colleagues to break 
with Philip at once, and cried, 
"He is no true Frenchman who O > 

opposes it." The king supported 
him. 

COLIGNY ATTACKED. 

The Duke of Anjou, who 
had ordered or approved Conde's 
murder, was Catherine's favorite 
— if she cared for any of her 
children. One day, just after 
talking with the admiral, the 
king showed violent anger to- 
ward his brother, and seemed to 
threaten his life — or so Anjou reported to his mother. The precious pair agreed 
that Coligny must die. Young Guise was their fitting instrument. A bitter 
partisan from his cradle, the heir of his father's feuds and hatreds, despising 
his father's dying counsels,\ it was congenial work for him. 

The Protestants always felt that the court was not to be trusted, and many 
friends had warned Coligny not to return to Paris after the death of the Queen 
of Navarre ; but he was not a man to weigh his safety in the balance with what 
seemed his duty. One of his attendants soon begged to be relieved from duty and 




THE CARDINAL OF LORRAINE. 




388 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 389 

•allowed to leave the city. Being asked for his reason, he replied, "Because they 
caress you too much, and I would rather escape with the fools than perish with 
the wise." These fears were prophetic, and those who yielded to them proved 
to be the wise ones rather than the fools. But it appeared unreasonable to 
expect, in the midst of wedding festivities, that the vengeance of the godless 
would fall so soon and with such wholesale fury. 

On Friday morning, August 2 2d, four days after Henry's marriage, the ad- 
miral was returning on foot from the palace, when a shot was fired from a window. 
Either the aim was not quite true, or he swerved aside ; but one ball entered his 
left arm, while another tore off his right forefinger. He pointed to the opposite 
liouse ; it was the property of a servant of the Duke of Guise. It was searched 
sX once: the gun, which was found on the floor, belonged to one of the duke's 
bodyguard. It was soon learned that one of the duke's horses had been waiting 
behind the house, and that the would-be assassin had escaped upon it. 

When the news reached the king, he was playing tennis with Guise and 
Coligny's son-in-law. He threw down his racket in a rage, and cried, " Am I to 
be forever troubled with these broils ? Shall I never have any quiet ? " He went 
to his chamber and paced it with black looks. His mother and brother came to 
him ; he eyed them with suspicion, turned away, and would not speak to them. 
Navarre and Conde, after a hasty visit to the wounded man, asked the king for 
permission to leave Paris, as they and their friends were not safe there. The 
king, still in a fury, swore that he would have vengeance on all concerned in the 
outrage. He had the gates closed and the city searched, but he who fired the 
shot had gone. 

Coligny, suffering from his wounds, sent for the king, who went at once 
to his bedside and called him " father." Catherine and Anjou, fearing to trust 
the two together, thrust themselves into the room, but Charles sent them away 
when the admiral expressed a wish to speak with him alone. The queen soon 
interrupted them, pretending consideration for the injured man, and dragged her 
son away. As they went back, she asked again and again, "What did he say? " 
He would not answer. At last, wearied by her importunity, he burst out, " Well, 
if you will have it, he said you have too much to do with affairs. He wanted to 
caution me, before he died, against letting you drive us all to the devil ; and, by 
Jove, I believe he is right! " 

After that, what was left of the admiral was not worth insuring. A king who 
cannot keep secrets, nor protect his most faithful servants against their deadliest 
foes, is not one to handle affairs of state. Yet these details do not fit with the opin- 
ion long held by Protestant historians, that Charles was acting a part throughout. 
He had hardly the ability for that, and certaialy not the self-command. 

Guise, believing that his share in the attempted murder could not be more 
than suspected, asked for an audience the next day, took the high tone of 



39° 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



injured innocence, and asked permission to leave the court The king frowned: 
" You can go when and where you please ; but if you are proved guilty, I will know 
well enough where to find you.'' In all this the evidence goes to show that the 
poor weak king was sincere. But he was like the mob, "always of opinion with 
the last speaker." He could not resist pressure ; and now he was abandoned to 

the enemies of his 
soul and of France. 

THE PLOT. 

If any thing were 
attempted against 
Guise, he could turn 
on his accomplices; 
it seemed best for 
them to make a bold 
stroke and take 
matters into their 
own hands. Accord- 
ingly Catherine and 
Anjou, after consult- 
ing with Marshal 
Tavannes, the Duke 
de Nevers, and two 
others, went to the 
king's cabinet with 
these advisers late 
on Saturday evening. 
The queen-mother 
did most of the talk- 
ing. "The Hugue- 
nots are arming," she 
began. It was a lie, 
but what did that 
matter? "They 
mean to crush you. 
The Catholics have had enough of this ; the citizens are in arms." " But I have 
forbidden it," said Charles. "Still it is done. And what will you do?" He 
did not know. She went on: "One man has made this trouble. Remember 
Amboise, where they rose against your brother: remember Meaux, where they 
had planned to take you, and you had to fly. Away with them ! " 




ASSASSINATION OF COLIGNY. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 391 

After more of this talk, the councillors urged the killing of all the Hugue- 
nots. De Retz alone objected, and he was soon brought to agree with the rest. 
Catherine resumed her discourse. "They are coming to-morrow to demand ven- 
geance on Guise. They will throw the blame ou us. You may as well know it: 
your mother and your brother did the deed. We struck at the admiral to save 
the king; and you must finish the work, or you and all of us are lost." 

The poor weak monarch still hesitated. These men were his friends, he 
said ; some of them he loved, to all he was pledged. What was to become of his 
honor? His mother brushed this trivial question aside. "If you will not do it, 
we will leave you, and do what we can without you. So you are afraid of the 
Huguenots?" 

She knew how to pla} r on her son's passions. Rising in a rage, he 
cried: u By God's death, since you think it right to kill the admiral, let every 
Huguenot in France die with him, that not one be left to reproach me with 
the deed ! " 

This much gained, the rest was easy. The city gates were closed, the citi- 
zens called to arms. Details were left to Gnise, who was here in his element. 
By midnight his charges were given to the captains of the guards and to the town 
authorities. Every Catholic was to fasten a white cross on his cap and a strip 
of linen ou his left arm ; all were invited to join in the good work. 

It was now Sunday and St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24th, 1572. The 
signal was to be given at daybreak, but the anxious queen ordered the bell — it 
was a church bell, of course — rung an hour and a half earlier. As she listened 
at the window with Anjou, a pistol went off beneath. Struck with sudden terror, 
she sent a message to Guise to stop. But it was too late: he had ridden to the 
admiral's. 

MURDER OF COLIGNY. 

The captain of the king's guard knocked at the door, and struck down the 
servant who opened it. The soldiers rushed up stairs. Coligny was at prayer; 
he told his attendants to save themselves if they could. Behme, a German, was 
first in the room, asking, "Are you the Admiral?" He answered calmly: 
''Yes. Young man, respect my gray hairs." The ruffian stabbed him ; othel 
blows followed, more thau enough. "Is it done?" came a voice from beneath. 
"The duke will not believe it without seeing. Throw him out !" The body wps 
flung from the window. Guise and his brother wiped the blood from the dis- 
figured face, and then (it is said) kicked or trampled on the corpse. 

It is to be remembered in excuse for the young murderer, that he always 
believed, though without reason, that his father's assassination had been ordered 
by Coligny. Few in those da}'s had much regard for human life; but there was 
one difference between the two parties, which the papists could never understand. 
The better sort of Protestants were men of their word; they had a sense of 



392 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

honor, which forbade treachery and underhand methods. Thus, throughout 
these long-continued struggles, they were at a heavy disadvantage. 

The murder of Coligny was but the beginning. The Huguenots, waked by 
the ringing of church-bells and the shouts of "Death! kill all," found the assas- 
sins at their doors or in their chambers. In the Louvre and its courtyard two 
hundred lords and gentlemen were cut down or shot, and at least three hundred 
more in the city. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, an intimate friend of the 
king, who had left Charles but a few hours before, was stabbed by masked men 
at his bedside. Teligny, the admiral's son-in-law, tried to escape by running 
along the roofs, and was shot from the street. One nobleman was chased to the 
chamber of Henry, who was not there. The young queen, wakened by his cries, 
called the nurse to open the door ; wounded in both arms and mad with terror, 
the intruder laid hold of Margaret, covering her with his blood. Her screams 
brought assistance, and she managed to save the man's life. As she passed to her 
sister's apartment, another fugitive was struck dead at her feet, and she fainted 
at the sight. Thus through the very courts of the palace the butchers pursued 
their prey. 

A FEAST OF BLOOD. 

It was the same throughout the city. Sixty thousand men of all ranks are 
said to have taken part in the massacre, and two thousand were killed that morn- 
ing. The highest nobles led the mob. Guise cried through the streets, " It 
is the king's will; let none escape!" Marshal Tavannes shouted, "Bleed them, 
bleed them I The doctors say bleeding is as good iu August as in May." It 
was a carnival of slaughter. 

Navarre and Conde were not among the slain. Both were of royal blood; 
both, by the king's desire, had lately married ladies of the court. Charles sent 
for them on that hideous morning, swore at them fiercely, and required them to 
change their religion at once. Henry submitted; his cousin, a mere boy, was 
bolder. Given three days of grace, his resolution yet held out. "It is the 
mass, death, or the Bastile," cried the frantic king. " Which you please," Conde 
answered, " so it is not the mass." Charges would have slain him then and 
there, but others held back the Toyal hand. But both princes were in the toils, 
and found it necessary to conform to requirements for the time. 

On Sunday noon the king ordered the butchering to be stopped, and it 
ceased for that day. But Paris had had a taste of blood ; the human tiger was 
roused, and wanted more. Next morning the bells rang out again, and the 
horrid business was resumed. It lasted in full force for two days more, and 
incidental murdering went on till the week ended. The Huguenots who 
had hidden from the first attack were diligently sought for, and little mercy 
shown to sex or age. "Infants, packed in baskets, amid jeering laughter, were 
flung over the bridge into the Seine. Little boys not ten years old were seen 




A NOBLEMAN SEEKING REFUGE IN QUEEN MARGARET'S CHAMBER. 



393 



394 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

dragging with cords in triumph along the streets a Huguenot infant torn from 
its slaughtered mother's breast." The count of Coconnas, who was afterwards 
justly beheaded, seized thirty persons, imprisoned them, and on their refusal to 
recant put them to death by slow torture, and enjoyed their agonies. Rene, 
Catherine's perfumer^ who was accused of having poisoned the late queen of 
Navarre through a pair of gloves, amused himself by visiting the Protestants 
in several prisons, and cutting them with his dagger. Pezen, a butcher, and 
Cruce, a worker in gold, afterwards boasted of having killed in a single day, the 
first a hundred and twenty Huguenots, the other above four hundred; but these 
claims were doubtless beyond the truth. These villains believed what their 
priests told them, that their crimes were acts of piety r to be liberally rewarded 
in heaven. 

INCIDENTS OF THE MASSACRE. 

The story of those horrid days would fill a volume. Rank, repute, charac- 
ter, eminence of whatever sort, was no protection. Ramus, a famous scholar, 
was found at his devotions in an upper story of his house ; his last words were a 
prayer for his murderers. He was shot, stabbed, thrown from the window, and 
dragged, still breathing, through the streets : his head was cut off and his body 
flung into the Seine. La Place, a jurist and historian, was twice summoned to 
the Louvre, and then stabbed on the way. The head of the great house of La 
Force, after paying two thousand crowns as ransom for himself and his sons, 
was murdered with the elder of them. The younger, aged thirteen, lay still for 
hours between the bodies of his father and his brother, covered with their blood. 
Passers-by stopped to look at the group, and said "Ay, best kill the cubs as well 
as the old wolf. " Plunderers took their outer garments : at last came a poor man, 
marker in a tennis-court, who tried to pull off the child's laced stockings, and let 
fall some expressions of pity. At this the boy raised his head a little, and whis- 
pered, "I am not dead." " Lie still," said the rescuer, "till I come again." He 
returned when it was dark, covered the lad with a tattered mantle, and led him 
to a place of safety. On the way he was still in danger, and after reaching his 
relative, Marshal Biron, he had to be smuggled out of Paris in disguise, for the 
blood-hunters were still on his .track. He lived seventy years longer, and became 
a Marshal of France. 

The occasion was favorable for the settlement of private grudges, and the 
enriching of such as did not object to blood-stained gains. "Defendants in 
actions at law assassinated the plaintiffs, debtors slaughtered their creditors, jeal- 
ous lovers butchered their rivals." Two nobles of the house of Clermont were 
at law ; one took the shortest road to the title and estate by killing the other. 
The Baroness du Pont was seeking a divorce ; the process was abridged, and 
the ladies of the court much interested, by finding the baron with his throat 
cut. Brantdme, in his Memoirs, says that he knew many gentlemen who made 




THE DUKE OF GUISE VIEWING THE BODY OF COLIGNY. 



395 



396 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

as much as ten thousand crowns apiece by pillage, and that the royal jewel-cases 
were largety replenished in the same unroyal way. Rene, the perfumer, may 
have been a go-between in this irregular second-hand trade, for he got possession 
of the whole stock of a wealthy jeweler, on pretence of helping him to escape, 
and then killed him. 

Charles IX. is said to have stood at his window and fired muskets at the 
fugitives till he was tired. On Sunday evening he wrote letters to send abroad, 
pretending that Guise was the sole author of the massacre, and that he and his 
court had been in danger. Two days later he acknowledged h ; s responsibility 
for this punishment of treason, as he called it, before the Parliament of Paris, 
which paid him many compliments and ordered an annual commemoration of 
the deed. On the same Tuesday he, with his mother and her ladies, went to the 
slaughter-house at Montfaucon to exult over the headless body of Coligny, which, 
after being subjected to shameful indignities, had been partially burned and 
hungup by the heels like a pig. "Pah, it smells!" said one of the visitors- 
The king answered with a quotation worthy of its pagan source : " The carcass 
■of an enemy always emits a pleasant odor." To finish here the history of the 
greatest Frenchman of his day ; his memory was branded, his children were 
degraded to the rank of plebeians and made incapable of office, his castle of Cha- 
tillon destroyed, and the very trees on his estate, with the foolish rage for 
destruction that marked all French persecutions, were cut down. Yet his daugh- 
ter, Teligny's widow, became the wife of the great Prince of Orange. 

Among the Huguenots who escaped was one who owed his life to a singular 
act of magnanimity. Regnier, a gentleman of Quercy, had a bitter personal 
•enemy, Vezin, who had sworn to take his life. During the massacre this man, 
■with two soldiers, entered Regnier 1 s room and arrested him. Expecting instant 
death, he was led forth, told to mount a horse, and escorted in silence to his dis- 
tant home. " Now you are safe," said his captor. " Between brave men, danger 
should be equal. We can settle our affair when you will." Of course Regnier 
protested his gratitude. Vezin answered, "Love me or hate me, as you please," 
and rode back to Paris. This story, with other events of that fearful time, is 
brilliantly told in a recent English book, " The House of the Wolf." 

IN THE PROVINCES. 

The massacre was not confined to Paris. Old fires of hatred were banked, 
not extinguished, throughout France. Either by hasty orders from Paris, or 
from the spontaneous rage of papists, similar atrocities were committed in many 
cities. The news of St. Bartholomew's Day traveled fast, and was like a spark 
to powder. "They heard of it at Meaux on the Sunday evening ; that night 
the streets of Meaux were drenched in blood. They heard of it at Orleans on 
Tuesday the 26th ; for a week onward from that date, Catholic Orleans gave 




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397 



398 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

itself up to the pillage and murder of its Huguenot inhabitants. They heard 
of it in Lyons on Thursday the 28th, and scenes of horror, outrivalling those of 
Paris, were day by day enacted. The Rhone was literally so red with blood that 
the inhabitants of Aries and other towns below Lyons for days abstained from 
drinking its waters. Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Angers, Saumur, Bourges, 
and other cities, followed the lead. It was not the gusty act of a single night, 
but a prolonged and widespread massacre of six weeks and more." Two histo- 
rians place the number slain at a hundred thousand ; others say seventy, thirty, 
twenty thousand. One, who praises the slaughter, reduces it to ten thousand. 
The truth is probably between the two extremes. 

There were some honorable and humane men among the Catholic officials. 
When Claude of Savoy received command to kill all the heretics in Dauphiny, 
he said it could not be the king's, and he would treat it as a forgery. The Count 
of Charny took a similar course in Burgundy. De Montmorin, the Governor of 
Au verge e, refused to obey the order unless the king were there to give it in per- 
son, and witness its fulfilment. The Viscount of Ortes, Governor of Bayonne, 
was yet bolder: he reported that the town had good citizens and the garrison 
brave soldiers, but no executioner among them. 

THE NEWS ABROAD. 

It took two weeks for the news to reach Madrid. Philip at once sent six 
thousand crowns to Coligny's murderers. "He showed so much gaiety," the 
French ambassador wrote to his master, " that he seemed more delighted than 
with all the good fortune that had ever before come to him. I went to see him 
next morning, and as soon as I appeared he began to laugh, arid with signs of 
extreme content to praise your Majesty. You deserved your title of Most 
Christian, he said, and there was no king worthy to be your comrade, either for 
valor or prudence. I thanked him, and said I thanked God for enabling your 
Majesty to prove to his master that his apprentice had learned his trade." 
This was strange language, and sounds to us like Protestant irony ; but probably 
all concerned regarded it as a delicate compliment. 

At Rome the joy was equally sincere and still more demonstrative. Cath- 
erine made haste to send Coligny's head to the Cardinal of Lorraine, whose 
conscience must have smitten him that he had not been at home to plan the 
massacre and enjoy it. Cannons were fired from the castle of St. Angelo, the 
city was illuminated for three nights, and the new pope, Gregory X1IL, said 
that such a deed of faith pleased him more than fifty battles of Lepanto, where 
the Turks had lately been beaten in a great naval fight. A heretic, you see, 
Was much worse than an unbeliever. He went in procession about the city, 
with his cardinals and dignitaries ; masses and Te Deums were sung in the finest 
style : it was a most impressive and edifying occasion. Strenuous efforts have 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



399 



since been made to deny these facts, but in vain. The Bodleian library at 
Oxford preserves a two-leaved pamphlet, now very rare, describing the solemni- 
ties ordered by this pope on learning "the blessed news of the destruction of 
the Huguenot sect." Medals still exist that were struck to commemorate the 
massacre ; we need not describe them, for we can furnish copies. And on 




CARDINAL LORRAINE RECEIVING THE HEAD OF COLIGNY. 

the walls of the Sistine chapel may still be traced, or might a few years ago, at 
least the outlines of a painting by Vasari, setting forth the deed of blood ; it 
once had the inscription, Pontifex Coligni necem probat — "The Pope approves 
the slaying of Coligny." 

Brantome says that his Holiness shed tears in private over the details of the 
massacre, and lamented that "so many of the innocent perished with the guilty, 



400 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

and that the guilty had so little chance to repent and make their peace with 
God." These sentiments are to his credit so far as they go; but humanity of 
this kind must be considered rather ornamental than useful. 

The effect produced in the north was of another sort. "A cry of horror 
rang through Germany. Many writings were published there, all denouncing 
the massacre, and describing it as a compound of trickery, perfidy, and wicked- 
ness, beyond all that had ever been committed in the annals of tyranny. Charles 
sent deputies to explain that he had been forced to nip a dangerous conspiracy 
in the bud, since Coligny had plotted to kill him and many more, and to place 
Conde on the throne ; but these slanders on the dead gained little credence, 
and the king's excuses were coldly received. His ambassador in England had 
no cheerful office when he presented the despatches. The room was hung with 
black : the court was in deep" mourning. " A gloomy silence was preserved : no 
friendly eye was turned toward him : every countenance was mournful and down- 
cast. He approached the queen, who neither rose from her throne nor extended 
her hand, according to the courtesy of the. times." After reading what he 
brought, she spoke with a frown : " Heaven weeps for the miseries of France. 
Your king must be a cruel master to have so many traitors in his realm. It 
seems some wished to do away that commandment which says, 'Thou shalt not 
kill.' " 

However great the satisfaction of those who had urged him on, Charles was 
not wholly pleased with what he had done. He said to his physician, " I know 
not what ails me ; my whole body seems in a fever. I see nothing round me but 
hideous faces covered with blood. I wish the weak and innocent had been 
spared." Strange tales were told, which Henry IV., long after, used to repeat 
with a shudder. Ravens perched on the Louvre and croaked all night, for a 
week. Groans and screams and blasphemies were heard at midnight ; the king, 
thinking the massacre had begun afresh, sprang from his bed and sent his guards 
into the streets to stop it ; but there was nothing. These noises lasted through 
the first week in September : they bear witness to the superstitions of the time, 
and to the royal remorse. 

SIEGE OF ROCHELLE. 

And yet "the Huguenot sect" was not destroyed, as the pope and the court 
supposed. Error dies hard, and Truth still harder. There were risings in the 
south and elsewhere ; the survivors of the party soon numbered eighteen thou- 
sand armed men, and held a hundred towns and castles. Those who had fled to 
foreign lands acted as political missionaries, and stirred up sympathy and wrath. 
Montauban, Nimes, and Rochelle fortified themselves and formed a confederation. 
The English nobles offered to send troops to France at their own expense ; but 
Elizabeth, who always grudged help to the distressed away from home, forbade 
the expedition. The fourth war was carried on by sheer native courage. Rochelle, 




VISIONS OF A GUILTY KING. 
Charles IX. after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. 



401 



402 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



with a garrison of a thousand and its citizens, withstood a large army for 
four months. It was blockaded by sea and land ; the besiegers, led by Anjou 
and nearly all the Catholic nobles, made twenty-nine assaults, dug seventy 
mines, and fired thirty-five thousand cannon-balls at the town, but all in vain. 
Inspired by their 
ministers and val- 
iantly helped by their 
wives and daughters, 
•the burghers shouted 
out Clement Marot's 
psalms and repelled 
every attack. 
Among their 
prisoners was 
Cosseins, the 
captain of the 
guard who 
had broken in 
Coligny's door 
and killed the 
porter; they 
put him to 
death. The 
Duke D'Au- 
male was shot 
in the tren- 
ches; Anjou, 
busy with his 
schemes on 
the throne of 
Poland, ne- 
glected his 
duty. A pes- 
tilence broke 
out among the 
troops, which 
is said to have 

carried off charges ix. and his mother. 

near thirty thousand of them, while twelve thousand fell in the fight. It was 
a costly and a useless siege. 




■ 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 403 

SIEGE OF SANCERRE. 

Still more memorable is the defense of Sancerre. It was a small place, 
poorly fortified arid ill supplied ; but its heroic citizens held out for ten months 
against five thousand regular soldiers. The provisions gave out ; from half a 
pound of bread a day they were reduced to a pound a week. When all the do- 
mestic animals had been eaten, they hunted for rats and mice. Their minister, 
who had been through a famine at sea, taught them to soak and chew strips of 
leather. After these were gone, books, papers, parchments, were used. " I have 
seen them eagerly consumed," he testified, "when the writing could still be read 
distinctly on the fragments served up in the dish." Nearly all the young children 
died, but the sentiments of honor and decency survived. Some famished wretches 
who were caught feeding on their offspring were publicly executed. To eighty- 
four men who were killed by the enemy, five hundred died of starvation. But 
there was no thought of surrender. 

A treaty signed July 6th, 1573, granted to Rochelle, Nimes, and Montauban 
the free exercise of their religion. The ambassadors who had come to offer 
Anjou the Polish crown, some of them being Protestants, had interceded for 
the oppressed, and their wishes could not be overlooked ; besides, the treasury was 
empty. Sancerre was cruelly excluded from the peace ; but its heroic defenders, 
gaunt, hollow-eyed, tottering on the verge of the grave, held out till the same 
terms were given them. The fourth war was ended. 

The Huguenots soon showed that their spirit was not broken. On August 
26th their deputies met at Montauban and framed a petition to the king. In 
this bold document they asked for liberty of worship throughout the realm; 
for the punishment of those who had murdered their friends a year before ; for a 
reversal of Coligny's sentence, and the vindication of his memory; and for a 
general amnesty, extending to all who had taken part in the late war. The 
demands had at least a moral effect. Catherine, on hearing them, cried indig- 
nantly, "If Conde were still alive, and had fifty thousand foot and twenty thou- 
sand horse to back him, he could not ask the half of this." 

The moderate or "third party," otherwise called the Politicals or Malcon- 
tents, now came to the front again. Depressed by the recent turn of events, 
their ideas and desires were unchanged, and they had additional reasons for hat- 
ing Guise and the extremists. Montmorency and his brother deeply resented 
the murder of their cousin Coligny, and the insults heaped upon his corpse and 
his memory. With them were the Marshal Biron, whose young relative, La 
Force, had so strangely "escaped from the massacre, and other great nobles. 
These formed a close alliance with the Huguenots, whose leaders were still 
Navarre and Conde ; for every one knew that their conformity to Rome was 
merely under pressure and for the time. 



404 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



D'ALENCON. 

The allies received a strange recruit and an unworthy chief from the royal 
house. This was the king's youngest brother, the Duke D'Alencon, who after- 
wards played a somewhat prominent though an ignoble part in Dutch and Eng- 
lish history. Since Anjou had gone to Poland, he aimed at the succession to 
the throne. He wished to be lieutenant-general, but Catherine would not con- 
sent. Between the members of this family there was no strong affection : long 
jealous of his brothers, he had borne no part in their crimes. He now headed a 
conspiracy which was to be carried out on March ioth, 1574. He, with Navarre 
and Conde, was to escape from the court, which was then at St. Germain, to seize 
certain strongholds, to raise their party, and to do what more they might, hoping 
to take the power from Catherine and Guise. 

It was D'Alencon himself through whom the plot failed. His resolution, 
feeble at the best, gave way, and he basely betrayed his accomplices to their 
worst enemy, his mother. Several lives paid the penalty of his folly, among 
them that of Montgomery, the slayer of Henry II. The Marshals Montmorency 
and Cosse were imprisoned in the Bastile, and the princes confined at Vincennes. 
La Noue, the Huguenot general, was ready for war ; but another event changed 
everything. 

The king had long been failing. Never strong in body or mind, he was 
exhausted alike by his exercises, his passions, and perhaps his remorse. As his 
end drew near, he sent for Navarre, and said to him: "Beware of — ." The 
name was whispered so low that none but Henry heard it ; it was supposed to be 
that of his brother or his mother. So Catherine thought, for she offered an ob- 
jection: "My son, you should not speak thus." "Why not?" said he; "it is 
true." He died on May 30th, 1574, "bathed," it is said, "in his blood, which 
oozed from every pore." He was not bigot enough to feel as did the dying 
Marshal Tavannes, that his share in the Feast of St. Bartholomew was a merit 
which would wipe out all his sins. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE THREE HENRIES. 



[I., hitherto known as the 
Duke of Anjou, had 
been but two weeks in 
Poland when he re- 
ceived the news of 
his brother's death. 
Already tired of the 
throne he had taken 
such trouble to gain, 
and much preferring 
the license and luxury 
of Paris, he fled from 
his palace by night 
with his dissolute com- 
panions. Having 
crossed the Polish 
frontier, he traveled 
with much less haste, 
and spent some weeks 
in Italy. One of his first 
acts on reaching France 
was to march bare-headed 
in a procession of Flagellants, each 
holding a torch in one hand and 
in the other a scourge, which he applied to the back of the man in front. 
The Cardinal of Lorraine, doubtless much against his will, took part in these 
proceedings, and the unaccustomed severity of the exercise is said to have caused 
his death, which occurred in this same year, 1574. He was one of the ablest men 
of his time, but his ability had been used only for ends of mischief. It was 
not merely the prejudice of his enemies that painted his character in dark tints 
for they were the only ones that fitted the subject. "He was a priest without 
piety, and a statesman without honor ; a libertine by temperament, and a hypo- 
crite by habit ; avaricious, unfeeling, treacherous ; concealing, under an engag- 
ing air of simulated candor, a black heart and a malignant and revengeful spirit." 

(405) 




FAC SIMILE OF MEDALS STRUCK IN ROME AND PARIS, IN HONOR OF THE 
ST. BARTHOLOMEW MASSACRE. 




ST. BARTHOLOMEW MEDALS. 



406 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 407 

The history of this reign, which lasted fifteen years, offers little of striking 
interest, except the tragedies that marked its close. The intrigues of the con- 
tending parties kept the realm in confusion, and this period is chiefly memora- 
ble as that in which France sank to the lowest depth of anarchy and wretched- 
ness. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, throwing to the winds all restraint of 
truth, justice, and humanity, had been a fearful example to the nation. Hatred 
and suspicion ruled, and the government, destitute of any fixed principle or 
moral force, sank into contempt. The great nobles more and more grasped at 
power and drew into factions, whose course is not always easy to follow, because 
most of them aimed only at their own selfish ends. "The ignorant popu- 
lace, infatuated with religious frenzy, recognized no other law than the law of the 
strongest, and the arbiter of their disputes was the dagger or the bullet." Pri- 
vate virtue might still be found in scattered homes and among humble Calvinists, 
but it was vain to look for it at court. If there were any more women like 
Jeanne d'Albret and Coligny's wife, they were not prominent. Catherine de 
Medicis still set the fashions, and they were bad ones. A fantastic mock- 
chivalry prevailed in the higher circles, and took the place of purity of life, 
honorable sentiments, and real respect for the sex. 

During this era of decay three men, having the same given name, were the 
chief personages in France. Henry, Duke of Guise, had the merit, such as it 
was, of being true to his inherited principles. Brave, liberal, and of popular 
manners, he was the undisputed leader of the extremists and the idol of the 
Parisian mob. To put down the Protestants, and to get all that could be got 
for himself and his relatives, were the objects he steadily pursued. He was not 
a genius ; his aims and character command little of our modern sympathy ; but 
the murderer of Coligny, the leader in the great massacre, was at least consist- 
ent throughout his whole life. 

HENRY III. 

This was far more than could be said for the King of France. He was much 
abler than any of his three brothers ; but no monarch ever made less use of his 
abilities. As a boy he had been a soldier, a deep intriguer, a relentless perse- 
cutor; but no sooner did the Polish throne seem within his grasp than he aban« : 
doned cares of war and state for what he considered pleasure. The condition of 
the country, and even his own safety, required a wise head, a firm and steady 
hand ; yet he at once became the most frivolous, the most despicable of sover- 
eigns. His childish games, his two thousand lapdogs, his worthless favorites, 
occupied his time. Laced, painted, and perfumed, the king and his councillors 
would walk abroad, each striving to outdo the other with his cup and ball, 
amid the jeers of Paris. The next day they would be seen clad in sackcloth, 
counting their beads, mumbling their Latin prayers, and feebly scourging one 
another. The older nobles murmured because these parasites excluded them 



408 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



from the honors and profits of office : when several of the new men killed each 
other in duels, the king lamented as if for a wife or child, but he grieved 
alone. While yet a 
novice in his high 
place, " he was loaded 
with dishonor. The 
Polish diet had ex- 
pelled him with the 
most degrading 
marks of infamy, 
and he now slum- 
bered on the throne 
of France, while its 
foundations were 
crumbling into dust. 
He was hated by the 
Calvinists for his 
breaches of faith ; he 
was despised by the 
Catholics for his im- 
becility. The sub- 
stance of royalty had 
departed from him, 
and nothing but the 
shadow remained. 
Openly bearded by 
the Huguenots, while 
the Guises secretly 
conspired against his 
authority and even 
his personal liberty, 
this miserable de- 
scendant of the house 
of Valois saw none 
but enemies abroad 
and traitors at home." 
His mother was his 
chief adviser, and her 
policy tacked and 
veered with changing 
winds of danger. How much she cared for the chief question at issue was shown 




HENRY III. 




THE LOUVRE 



409 



410 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

by her remark wlien Conde was thought to liave won the battle of Dreux, in the 
first of these religious wars : ' ' The worst will be that we shall have to say our 
prayers in French." She never understood that any could be more serious and 
earnest than herself. So far as she was concerned, bigotry was but a pretence: 
the murder of Coligny and so many thousands was but a means to confirm and 
extend the power of this worthless woman, by fixing her son more firmly in her 
leading-strings. 

Henry of Navarre was yet to win his fame. Though released from confine- 
ment, he was closely watched for a time. As soon as he could escape, he loudly 
proclaimed that he had always been a Protestant at heart, and had conformed to 
Rome only under compulsion and to save his life. This satisfied the Huguenots, 
who gladly accepted him as their leader. The next ten or twelve years he spent 
in his own dominions, except when he was in the field. The moderate Catholics 
were either his open allies, or his opponents in name or for the moment. The 
Marshals Montmorency and De Cosse were still in prison and in danger, and the 
Calvinists exacted their release as a condition of peace. The king at one time 
ordered these nobles to be strangled, but was persuaded to defer the sentence^ 
which had no effect but to make more enemies for him, and to tie D'Amville> 
Montmorency's brother, who was governor of Languedoc, more firmly to 
Navarre. 

SMALL WARS. 

A fifth war began in 1574. The king attempted to besiege Livron, but 
accomplished nothing, and soon left the field-work to other hands. His brother, 
Alencon, escaped in 1575 and joined Conde, who was bringing troops from Ger- 
many. These were defeated at Langres by Guise, who in the action received a 
wound in the cheek that gave him a scar for life and the nickname of Le 
Balafre. But elsewhere the Huguenots were more than able to hold their own, 
and a truce was made in November. It was broken ; more hostilities ensued^ 
and in May, 1576, a peace was concluded, granting all the confederates asked 
for — free exercise of the Reformed religion, cities, provinces, and honors to their 
leaders, and the reversal of Coligny's sentence. Sully, Navarre's chief ad viser,, 
said of Catherine: "She offered more than we meant to demand. Promises cost 
her nothing; and in making that peace she aimed only to disunite us." This 
she did chiefly by stirring up jealousies between D'Alengon and Navarre. 

Bnraged by the liberal terms granted to Protestants, the extreme party 
formed now a Catholic League, which was to trouble France sorely for many 
years. Its members swore, " under pain of excommunication and eternal damna- 
tion, to yield ready obedience and faithful service to the head." The real head 
was the Duke of Guise. Its objects were the same that this faction had long 
been seeking, but their attack upon the throne was now more concentrated and 
more apparent. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



411 



The king heard of this danger, and gathered such resolution as he had to 
meet it. Before the Estates of Blois, in December, 1576, he made an able speech 
on behalf of peace, showing the exhausted condition of the country and the 
uselessness of persecution. But the 
League was all-powerful, and the cry 
of the assembly was "one religion." 
Deputies were sent to Navarre, Conde, 
and D'Amville, requiring them to dis- 
band their troops — a pro- 
posal which they declined 
without thanks. Henry III. 
now yielded to pressure, and 
began the sixth war, which 
amounted to little. After 
displays of military and 
naval force which exhausted 
the funds of both sides 
peace was made in Septem- 
ber, 1577, on nearly the 
same terms as before. The 
Huguenots made certain 
moderate conces- 
sions, and received 
eight strong places. 

After less than 
two years of nominal ^ : '- 
peace, a seventh war, 'Zj. 

called that of Lovers, 
was stirred up by the '" ";: 
wife of one king and -. .:r| 

sister of the other. - ~. 

To gain an end of -J^p 

his own, Henry III., _- 

who was a poor j udge 

of virtue, accused 

Margaret of Navarre 

of adultery. The 

charge was believed 

to be premature, duke of guise. 

though it would have been amply justified a few years later. She protested her 

innocence, and in revenge urged her husband to seize Cahors, a city that had been 




4 i2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

promised to him as part of her dowry, but never given up. D'Alenyon fomented 
the discord : the children of Catherine de Medicis knew nothing of moral prin- 
ciple, and little of natural affection. In the summer of 1580 Navarre, with but 
fifteen hundred men, attacked Cahdrs, which was defended by a large force. He 
blew up the gate with a petard, but his entrauce was hotly opposed. His men 
became discouraged and wished to retire, but he refused, saying that his only 
retreat from the town would be the retreat of his soul from his body. " Speak 
to me of nothing but fighting," he cried: "conquest or death!" After five days 
of hand-to-hand combats on the bridge and through the streets, Cahors was 
taken. Three marshals came out against the victor; but Henry III. had no wish 
to crush one who was useful as a foil against more dangerous foes, and peace was 
made, this time to endure a little longer. 

The vagaries of the Duke d'Alencon would fill a chapter at once comic and 
romantic, with some elements of tragedy. His ambition was boundless, his 
talents chiefly those of deceit, his character feeble and shallow. Disappointed at 
home, he aimed at the throne of England. Queen Elizabeth deluded him with 
empty promises of marriage, aud urged the Netherlands to accept him as their 
sovereign. As will be told in a later chapter, he ruined his chances there by 
conduct worthy only of a criminal lunatic. His death, on June 10th, 1584, left 
Henry of Navarre next in succession to the throne of France; for the king, 
though married for ten years, was childless, as his three brothers had been. 

THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE. 

This painful prospect roused the League to full activity. What ? A heretic, 
a Protestant, to wear the crown and wield the sceptre ? Never. So Guise con- 
sulted his associates, put forward the Cardinal of Bourbon, Navarre's uncle, as 
claimant for the succession, made a secret treaty with Philip II., and prepared 
for war. The king scented trouble in the air, and called his councillors ; they 
were divided. Some urged alliance with the Huguenots ; others said, Submit to the 
League. Epernon, a chief favorite, was sent to Navarre to counsel his reconcil- 
iation with the Church ; but he refused, against the advice of some of his friends, 
who told him that private opinions ought to give wa.y in such a case. He might 
well hesitate before throwing himself into the hands of those who had murdered 
his friends twelve years and a half before. Besides, the nearest personal tie 
that bound him to the reigning house was broken, or at least much loosened, 
for his wife had left him. 

While Henry III. was lamenting this failure, the greatest opportunity of 
his life came. William of Orange had fallen by the hand of an assassin, and 
the Netherlanders in their distress begged the French king to take them under 
his protection on any terms — to become their sovereign, if he would. It was a 
noble offer ; but he was not man enough to accept it, and it was well for Dutch 
freedom that he declined. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 413 

The Catholic League included most of the great and wealthy nobles of the 
realm ; but these, while zealous in the cause, liked to increase their possessions 
much better than to spend hard cash. In this juncture their ally, Philip II., 
came to the rescue : the gold of Mexico and Peru, or what was left of it, was 
poured out without stint. Thus encouraged, the Leaguers, after a long and 
solemn preamble, and with free use of the holiest names, published their intention 
"to use strong hands and take up arms, to the end that the Church of God may 
be restored to its dignity and to the true and holy Catholic religion," as well 
as for several alleged minor ends — the advantage of the nobles, the easing of 
the people, the prevention of new taxes, and the welfare and happiness of all. 

TREATY OF NEMOURS. 

The king issued a counter proclamation, but it had little effect. The 
League had put an army in motion, and took possession of several cities ; 
Paris was theirs already. This was the eighth war, if that may be so called 
which was all on one side ; for Henry III. had not the spirit to call the Hugue- 
nots, or even their allies, the moderate Catholics, to his support. He yielded 
to the dictation of his foes, and on July 7th, 1585, signed the infamous Treaty 
of Nemours, which prohibited every religion but that of Rome, doomed the 
estates of Protestants to confiscation, and gave them six months — to their min- 
isters but a single month — to abjure their faith or leave the country. 

And now events begin to move more rapidly, and to assume a more pictur- 
esque and striking form. From that hour Guise was the real sovereign of France ; 
but he trembled in the hour of his triumph. When, on the day after the sign- 
ing of the treaty, he walked between the files of the royal guard into the presence 
of the puppet whom he had practically dethroned, he had a premonition of the 
fate that was to befall him three years later. " I thought myself dead," he said 
afterwards, "and my hat seemed lifted up on the tips of my hair." When 
Navarre heard the news, he bowed his head and cried, "Unhappy France, can I 
then do nothing for you ?" But soon came a messenger from Montmorency with 
a hasty note : " Sire, I have seen the treaty. The King of France and the King 
of Spain wish to gain me, but I am yours, with my brothers and my army." No- 
more was needed to raise a soldier's spirits. He put forth a proclamation in his 
turn, defending his opinions and course, giving his accusers the lie, denouncing 
the Lorraine nobles as foreign intruders in France, and challenging Guise to 
combat, either singly, or with two, or ten, or twenty on a side, after the manner 
of chivalry. 

This challenge was declined. Whether by design or accident, the duke 
never directly encountered Navarre in all these wars. They were of nearly 
the same age ; they began their stormy career at the same time ; they were 
accounted the bravest and best fighters in the kingdom ; every instinct, interest, 



414 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



and principle, made them mortal enemies ; and yet they were never pitted against 
each other in arms. The Huguenot prince doubtless felt that this ought not to 
be so, and he put himself on record accordingly. The Leaguers . replied that it 
was not a quarrel of individuals, that none of them had any personal ill will to 
Navarre, and that their cause was too sacred to be staked on the issue of a duel. 
Their reasons were more modern than their cause, and better adapted to our 
age than to that one. In this matter the honors rested with the maintainer at 
once of old chivalry and new freedom ; his spirited conduct won approval, sym- 
pathy, and friends. 

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR. 

Henry III. now summoned the chiefs of the Parliament of Paris, the mayor, 
the Cardinal of Guise, and some others, and made them a sarcastic speech. Its 

substance was this: " You wanted 
this war ; now you have got it, and 
you can pay for it. I was against it, 
and you need not expect me to bear 
all the cost. Gentlemen of the Par- 
liament, you cannot expect any sala- 
ries while this business lasts. Mr. 
Mayor, call your citizens together and 
tell them I want two hundred thou- 
sand gold crowns. Lord Cardinal, 
this is a holy war, and the Church 
will have to hand over her revenues." 
s \\ They all began to protest, but he 
stopped them. "You would have 
done better to take my advice, and 
keep the peace, instead of holding 
councils of war in your shops and 
cloisters. This attempt to put down 
the preachers may bring the mass in danger. Now act, and leave off talking." 
This last exhortation might have been thrown back on himself, for he was an 
admirable talker on occasion, and very poor at doing. 

Less than half-hearted in this enterprise, he took steps to embarrass those 
with whom he was supposed to be acting. Guise and his brother, the Duke of 
Mayenne, were to command the chief armies : the king appointed other generals, 
nominally to co-operate with them, but really to neutralize their efforts. To 
give Navarre time for his preparations, he sent a deputation of orators, who 
should try to convert him. The prince replied to their arguments with the 
plainest language, calling the court a prison, the war an unjust one, and Guise 
a coward for refusing to settle the dispute in person. It fitted neither with his 




V 



MONTMORENCY. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



4i5 



honor nor his conscience, he said, to be dragged to mass by force ; and he trusted 
God to protect the right, as He had done before. 

NAVARRE EXCOMMUNICATED. 

At this j unctnre Gregory XIII. died. The Leaguers had vainly tried, through 
the Jesuit Mathieu, who was called their 
courier, to gain his sanction for their 
plans. The new pope, Sixtus V., threw 
himself eagerly into the cause, and 
made haste to excommunicate Navarre 
and Conde as relapsed heretics, declar- 
ing them incapable of the throne. After 
the old manner, he released their sub- 
jects from allegiance, gave their posses- 
sions to any who could take them in the 
Church's name, and doomed them and 
their helpers to all possible penalties in 
this world and the next. The League 
was delighted with this sentence, but 
rational Frenchmen felt otherwise, 
knowing how such impertinences had 
been resented in the past, and aware 
that, so far as they had any effect, they 
struck at the liberties both of the state 
and the Gallican Church. Navarre 
replied with his usual frankness, calling 
the pope a liar, a heretic, and antichrist. 
This affair brought him more friends, 
and the pope himself admitted in after 
days that the two sovereigns whom he 
respected most and would like best, if 
only they were on the right side, were 
Elizabeth of England and Henry of 
Navarre. 

The spirit in which --... 

the leaders entered on ;'"';, 

this new war appears 
from some words ex- 
changed between Na- 
varre and his minister 
of finance. The little kingdom was poor, the funds were low, and these facts had 



**» 



--1 




SULLY. 



4i 6 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

been made clear at a meeting of the council just before. " Well, Baron of Rosny," 
said the king, "are we not ready to die together? It is no time then to econo- 
mize : men of honor must venture half their estates to save the other half." "No, 
sire," Sully answered; "we shall live together, not die. I have still a wood that 
will bring a hundred thousand francs, and you shall have them." The Hugue- 
nots, persecuted elsewhere, fled for protection to Navarre ; to provide for them, 
he confiscated the property of Catholics. "As for us," he said to his men, "we- 
shall get our living in the camp of the League." 

This eighth war was called the war of the Three Henries. Its active opera- 
tions did not begin till 1586, and then they were not so active as to require much 
description here. Conde had some successes in the west, and fought a battle in 
which D'Andelot's sons were killed. Navarre, hemmed in by two royal armies, 
brought his troops through their lines without loss, and went to Rochelle. To 
this neighborhood, under a local truce, came Catherine, who always placed great 
reliance on her diplomacy. The sterner Calvinists, knowing that she would 
tempt their leader to abjure his religion, and that the chief studies of the court, 
as Sully said, were gallantry and falsehood, were much alarmed at the prospect 
of this interview. 

It took place December 15th. The old queen brought along her "flying squad- 
ron" — the maids of honor through whom so many affairs of state were conducted. 
Navarre knew his customer well ; in fact, neither believed a word the other 
uttered. Catherine complained of the trouble he was giving. " Madam," he 
answered, " it is not I who keep you out of your bed. It is you who will not let 
me sleep in mine." "Must I always be thus disturbed?" she lamented: "I, who 
desire nothing so much as repose? " "Oh," said he, "the trouble you take does 
you good. You could not live if you were quiet." She asked him, significantly, 
what he would have. He looked deliberately over the group of attendant beauties, 
and replied, "Nothing that is here." And so the useless conference ended. 

BATTLE OF COUTRAS. 

Though seven royal armies were in the field, little was done till the fall of 
1587. On October 20th, near the village of Coutras, and some twenty-five miles 
northeast of Bordeaux, Navarre met the enemy. He had but four thousand 
infantry and twenty-five hundred horse ; the Duke of Joyeuse, one of the French 
king's chief favorites, commanded ten thousand or more, whose gay apparel con- 
trasted strongly with the faded garments and rusty armor of the Huguenots. 
"Behold your prey!" the prince shouted to his men; "it is a bridegroom who 
has the nuptial present in his pocket." He arranged his forces in a crescent, 
with Conde and Conde's younger bxother on the right. "You are Bourbons," 
he said, "and, please God, I will show myself the head of our house." 

As the Protestants knelt, Joyeuse said with scorn: "What are they doing? 
Why, they are afraid!" "Not so," one of his officers replied; "they are most 



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o 



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o 

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NAVARRF, AT THE BATTLE OF CODTRAS. 



41 7' 



418 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

dangerous after prayer." They rose, and rolled out a verse of Marot's psalms. 
Henry, wearing his famous white plume, rode along the ranks, with words of 
encouragement. The royalists charged, driving before them a force of light 
cavalry that had been placed well in advance. But the main body stood firm, 
while the foe came up in confusion. Navarre was in his element that day. To 
friends who thrust themselves in front to protect him, he cried, "Give me room: 
you stifle me ; I must be seeu !" He seized an officer of Joyeuse by the collar, 
shot another who came to the rescue, and shouted to the first, "Yield thee, Phili- 
stine !" The word, as we know, meant an enemy of the chosen people and of 
progress ; but its use was much less familiar then than it is now. 

In half an hour the battle was over. Joyeuse was slain, with near one-third 
of his men, four hundred of them nobles. Three thousand prisoners and eighty- 
four ensigns graced the triumph of the Huguenots, who had lost but about two 
hundred. Henry acted with moderation and clemency, sparing life as far as he 
could, and expressing regret for the fate of Joyeuse, whose body he sent back 
to Paris. When his councillors asked what terms he would now demand, he 
answered, "The same as before." He wrote, with his usual wit and point, to 
Henry III.: "Sire, my Lord and brother; thank God, I have beaten your ene- 
mies and your army." A sermon and a political treatise were in that short note. 
He meant that the French king had no business to be making war on his friends, 
and that armies so employed were his enemies. The other Henry knew this 
well enough, and perhaps was not sorry for the fate of Joyeuse, who alone among 
the favorites had urged submission to the League. 

Meantime the third Henry — Guise — was having his own way in the north 
and east. A large force of Germans and Swiss, badly led, were on their way to 
join Navarre. The duke, with some help from Epernou, hung on their flanks, 
prevented a junction, surprised them twice by night, slaughtered many, and 
finally drove them out of the country. As foreigners and plunderers, they were 
generally hated ; a story is told of a woman in Burgundy who cut the throats of 
eighteen sick or wounded Germans who had been left in her cottage. 

GUISE IN PARIS. 

Henry III., who had borne a part in this campaign, returned to Paris in 
triumph with his favorite Epernon. But the people gave all the credit to Guise. 
"Saul," they sang, "has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands." 
A book was sold with the title, "Military Exploits of the Duke of Epernon;" 
on each of its pages, in large type, was the word "Nothing." The throne was 
held in contempt, while Guise received an almost idolatrous devotion. Meaning 
to profit by this, he called a secret meeting of his family at Nancy. Their 
objects were the same as ever, but they had grown bolder with success. 'They 
resolved to extirpate the Calvinists, to depose the king, immure him in a cloister, 




GUISE ATTACKING THE GERMANS AND SWISS ON THEIR WAY TO JOIN NAVARRE. 



419 



4 2o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

expel the minions, confer on themselves all the high offices and dignities of the 
state, and rule the whole government of France at their pleasure;" at least this 
was reported and believed. The Cardinal of Guise used to say that he would 
never be happy till he held the king's head between his knees, to fit a monk's 
cowl on it. His sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, carried a pair of gold 
scissors, and boasted that she meant to make the cowl with them. 

Without announcing all their private aims, the Leaguers wrote to the king 
requiring him to drive from his court and council all persons offensive to them ; 
to give up such forts and towns as they might name, himself paying the garri- 
sons and all other expenses; to confiscate the estates of the Huguenots; and in 
short, to make himself entirely and absolutely a puppet in their hands. A more 
lawless and indecent demand was never made of any nominal sovereign. It was 
in the interest not of liberty, but of persecution ; not of the state, but of a few 
persons, and chiefly of a single family, which had come into France within the 
century. Tenacity was the one virtue of the Guises; they never changed a 
purpose nor let go a possession. Their ruling vice was not so much bigotry as 
shameless greed. Their pockets were considered first, the Church next, and 
justice and humanity came in nowhere. 

WHICH IS KING ? 

The feeble monarch, sorely embarrassed by these insolent demands, saw 
nothing better to do than delay his answer. Thereupon the Council of Six- 
teen, who held Paris for the League, concocted a plan to attack the Louvre, kill 
the courtiers and ministers, and hold Henry a prisoner. All was well arranged, 
when the plot was betrayed. The king increased his guards and prepared the 
palace for defense. The Sixteen, fearing for their lives, urged Guise to come 
to Paris at once. Henry, both by messenger and by letter, forbade his coming; 
he disregarded the order, and entered the city on May 9th, 1588, with but seven 
attendants. Huge crowds gathered to meet him : according to a witness of the 
scene, "the shouts of the people sounded to the skies ; nor had they ever cried, 
'Live the king,' as earnestly as they now shouted* 'Live Guise.' Some saluted, 
some thanked him, some bowed, some kissed the hem of his cloak. Those who 
could not get near expressed their joy by gestures. Some adored him as a saint, 
touched him with their beads, and then pressed these against their lips, eyes> 
and foreheads." It helps one to understand the fierce Parisian mob of those 
days, that their idea of a saint was one who had most to say and do against the 
Reformed. Certainly there was nothing saintly about Guise, unless his hatred of 
the Protestants were so considered. 

He called on Catherine, and she went with him to her son. The king had 
been advised to strike down the rebel then and there, and it was as good an 
opportunity as came later ; but if he meant to do it, his mother restrained him. 




WOODMAN'S CABIN IN THE ARDENNE FOREST. 



421 



422 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Tumults ensued : Paris was full of visitors from the provinces : the wildest 
rumors passed from mouth to mouth : barricades arose for the first time in the 
streets : the royal guards were not able to make head against the mob, and many 
of them were slain. The all-powerful duke stopped the fighting : the queen- 
mother went to him to negotiate, but his demands were too monstrous. She 
cried out angrily, "What would people say, what would the sovereigns of Europe 
think, if the king allowed a subject to propose what amounted to his abdication?'' 
Guise replied coolly, "Those are my terms." 

There was nothing left for Henry but flight ; and he escaped next day by 
the back door (so to speak), while Catherine occupied the duke's attention with 
a prolonged argument. In the midst of it an attendant came in and whispered 
in his ear. He sprang to his feet and exclaimed, " Madam, you have betrayed 
me. He has gone, and I am undone." The aged dissembler pretended to be 
surprised and not to believe the news. Her son had left for Chartres, where he 
was safer for the moment. 

Meantime Philip of Spain was sending his famous armada to England, and 
urging Guise to delay no longer. The latter ordered Paris to his mind, and tried 
to convene the Parliament. Its president. Harlai, refused, saying boldly, "It is 
to be lamented, when the servant drives away the master. My soul I confide to 
God ; my heart is the king's ; my body is at the service of the lawless." Said 
Guise, "I must have certain measures passed." Again the lawyer answered 
with an epigram : "When the majesty of the throne is violated, judges have no 
longer any lawful authority." But others were less scrupulous, and the usurper 
got what he wanted in that part of France. 

Basely yielding to pressure, Henry signed in July a paper which made him 
nominal head of the League, excluded Protestants from the succession, and 
bound him not to rest till Calvinism was crushed, besides making Guise general- 
in-chief. These promises he made, meaning to break them ; it was his habit to 
provide only for the moment, and take no thought of difficulties ahead. 

SECOND STATES OF BLOIS. 

The States-General met again at Blois in October, and again the king dis- 
played his talents as an orator.' He spoke of his poverty, which was now press- 
ing, and promised economy : he would wear his clothes out before getting new 
ones, and be content with a single fowl for his dinner, if a pair were thought too 
many. The Assembly, again controlled by the League, replied by reducing his 
supplies. He would agree to pronounce Navarre incapable of reigning while he 
remained a Protestant : they replied that Navarre as an individual must be 
excluded, and that a king might not even tolerate heresy. He flung out in 
wrath a sentiment which deserves far more approval than any of his actions: 
"He who sacrifices the national welfare to personal ambition, and seeks to pro- 
mote his private fortunes by, duplicity and treachery, must pay for it in infamy 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 423 

on earth, and endure God's judgments elsewhere." This only made Guise and 
his friends angry, for the cap fitted their heads perfectly. He insisted on print- 
ing his speeches : this filled the Leaguers with alarm, for rational people could 
not help seeing that, so far as the king's arguments went, he was in the right. 
With scarcely concealed sympathy, he presented a letter from Navarre, denounc- 
ing the meeting as packed by his enemies, denying its right to condemn him, 
and protesting that he was not a heretic. It is curious that people have always 
been so sensitive about the application of this elastic word. From the Roman 
point of view the Calvinists were heretics of course, and the pope and his adher- 
ents from that of Calvin ; yet either side was much offended when the obnoxious 
term was applied to them. St. Paul had been much more candid in admitting 
that he worshipped the God of his fathers in a way which his opponents called 
heresy. 

ASSASSINATION OF GUISE. 

It had become plain that there were too man}' Henries in the field. Navarre 
was at a distance, out of reach for the moment, and not really the main point at 
issue, after all, just then. The two chief antagonists were at hand and in close 
collision ; one or other of them had to retire from the scene. Guise was still at 
his plots against the throne and possibly the life of his master, who received sev- 
eral warnings of the fact. Enervated by long self-indulgence, Henry had nearly 
lost the will and power to act; but he would screw his courage to the striking- 
point, rather than be stabbed or thrust into a monastery. 

The court was still at Blois. A council of state was summoned for the 
morning of December 23d, 1588. Between the hall where it would meet and the 
king's cabinet were a small antechamber and a bedroom: these were to serve as 
the place of sacrifice. The king first asked Grillon, the captain of his guard, to 
undertake the business. Though he hated the duke, this man replied that he 
would gladly challenge Guise, or die for his master, but that he was a soldier and 
not an executioner. Asked next if lie would be silent, he said that was his busi- 
ness. Another readily took his place. The guards were doubled that night, 
and next morning, long before light, forty-five of them were admitted, by a secret 
stair, to the king's presence. He told them what was to be done, and they all 
professed readiness to do it. Eight of them, armed with sword and dagger, were 
stationed in the antechamber. It is strange that the fine Italian hand of Cath- 
erine de Medicis does not appear in these arrangements, except in objection to 
them. 

It was an age of treachery and suspicion, and one who had planned so many 
murders might well have distrusted his old accomplice, whom he had since 
wronged beyond forgiveness. But an infatuation of blind self-confidence came 
over Guise. On five or six notes of warning he wrote, " He dare not." To 



a 



friend he said, "I know no man on earth who, hand to hand with me, would not 




MUKDER OF THE DUKE OF GUISE. 



424 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 425 

have more reason, to fear than I." To some who urged him to leave Blois at once, 
he replied, "Affairs are in such a state that I would not go out by the door if I 
saw death coming iu at the window." This last was mere bravado, for he agreed 
to leave the next day. 

He supped that evening with one of his titled mistresses. When he reached 
his own room at three A. M., his uncle was there to give him another warning, 
but he brushed it aside as before, with "He dare not." At eight he was in the 
council hall. Here the Archbishop of Lyons gave him a hint, before a royal 
officer: "That dress is too light for the season: you should wear one stiff 
with fur." But it was not fur that could save him: in a simple, athlete's cos- 
tume, with a naked sword in his hand, he might possibly have escaped, for he 
was extremely strong. His eldest son, Joinville, was in the tennis-court with 
Henry's nephew, the Grand Prior; this had been arranged to keep the youth 
out of the way. His secretary sent a hurried note at the last moment, "Save 
yourself, or you are dead ; " but Guise had already left the hall for the king's 
cabinet, to which a valet summoned him. 

It is said that on the way he was seized with sudden faintness : if so, the 
murderers held their hands till he recovered. Noticing something sinister in 
their demeanor, he turned to glance at them as he raised his arm to lift the hang- 
ings at the door of the bedroom : at this moment the eight fell upon him. 
Encumbered with his cloak, he tried in vain to draw his sword ; but he dragged 
the assassins across the room before he fell. He was covered with wounds, and 
died without a word. 

Encouraged by this success, Henry had the doors and gates thrown open, 
and announced to those who crowded in that he meant to rule in deed as well as 
in name. He went to his mother, who lay sick, and said, "The King of Paris 
is no more; I am now King of France." She answered, " I fear you will soon 
be king of nothing." He had the remaining chiefs of the League arrested and 
confined, except the Dukes of Mayenne and Nemours, who escaped. The Cardi- 
nal of Guise was executed: his body and that of his brother were buried in quick- 
lime, in a place known to but a few, lest they should be turned into relics. 

Abundant proofs of conspiracy, treason, and complicity with Spain, were 
found : the papers of Guise showed that he had received two million ducats 
from Philip II. But all this went for nothing, so fiercely were the passions of 
the Parisian mob aroused. Every demonstration of hatred assailed the absent 
king: his statues were broken, his arms torn down, his name left out of the 
public prayers : the priests called him Herod, and demanded revenge for the 
blood of Guise. The theologians of the Sorbonne declared that he had forfeited 
the throne, and that his subjects ought to cast off their allegiance: the Parlia- 
ment ratified the sentence, after Harlai and others had been thrown into the Bas- 
tile. The Council of Sixteen called on Mayenne to take the government ; he 



426 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

came to Paris, and was made lieutenant-general. Half of France was presently 
in revolt. 

DEATH OF CATHERINE. 

Amid these commotions Catherine de Medicis died, January 5th, 1589, within 
a fortnight of her old accomplice. She had outlived three sons, two of them on 
the French throne, and left a fourth, king in little more than name: all of them 
put together had hardly the making of an average man. She had borne her 
large share in demoralizing France, in destroying its wealth and prosperity, in 
drenching it with blood. Two of the chief authors of the Massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew had now gone to their account, and the third was soon to follow. By 
rights, they should all have been hanged sixteen years before. 

And now one of another mould than these comes to the front. The king 
of Navarre was no saint ; but in every attribute of manhood he was far above 
his foes. He had largeness of mind and heart ; his ambition was legitimate, not 
basely selfish ; he was true to his friends ; and he loved France. Much love he 
cannot have had for the enemy of his youth, the murderer of his comrades ; 
but policy was the law of princes, and the policy of Navarre was. loyal and gen- 
erous. It was not by treachery and assassination that he meant to reach the 
throne of France. 

Henry III. was loath to call on this ally, for he too felt that a great gulf lay 
between them. He made overtures to Mayenne ; they were rejected with scorn. 
He sent to Rome for absolution : it was refused. His agent urged that the 
Cardinal of Guise, like his brother, was a traitor: the pope replied that he was 
the judge of that. In sore straits, with neither men nor money, and threatened 
by the all-powerful League, he made a treaty with Navarre. The two met at 
Plessis, near Tours, on April 30th. Bourbon knelt ; the other raised and embraced 
him. In a long interview they arranged their plans. After it was over, Navarre 
wrote to his friend Mornay, " The ice is broken, not without many warnings that 
I came here to die. As I crossed the river, I commended myself to God." The 
councillor answered, " Sire, you have done what you ought, but what none of us 
could have advised." So greatly and justly was the good faith of the last Valois 
distrusted, that the prince had halted a few miles from Tours, and consulted his 
attendants whether to go on or turn back. Sully claimed to have urged his 
master to take the risk ; and the event more than justified his wisdom. 

The country was already torn by another civil war. Mayenne attacked 
Tours in the night, but was driven off. Reinforcements came ; the two kings 
marched on Paris with forty thousand men, forced the gates of St. Cloud, and 
prepared to besiege the capital, where Mayenne had a force of less than ten 
thousand. The news that he was excommunicated alarmed Henry ; for two days 
he would not eat. " My brother," said Navarre, " the bolts of Rome do not touch 
conquerors. You will be safe from them in Paris." It was to be assaulted on 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



427 



August 2d. But the weapons he had so freely employed were now to be turned 
against the king: he had done forever with the Louvre and its tinsel joys. 

MURDER OF HENRY III. 

At least one priest freely preached assassination. Lincestre, the chief 
orator of the League, held up in the pulpit a chandelier that he said had come 




DEATH OF HENRY III. 



from the palace, ornamented with figures of satyrs. "See," he cried, "these are 
the king's devils, the gods he worships, the instruments of his enchantments. 



428 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Would it be lawful to kill such a tyrant ? I myself would be ready to do it at 
any moment — except when I am consecrating the Lord's body in the mass." 

Jacques Clement, a young Dominican monk with a bad record, was excited 
hy these tirades. He boasted much of what he meant to do, and was laughed at 
by his comrades. The prior of his convent told him it would be only a mis- 
demeanor, not a crime, to slay a tyrant, and spoke to the Dukes of Mayenne and 
Aumale, who did not discourage the design. The Sixteen urged him on and 
said (having no authority to make such promises) that he should be a cardinal if 
he escaped, or canonized if he fell. Guise's sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, 
whose husband was in the king's army, was liberal in her favors to this low-born 
and ignorant fanatic. He bought a dagger, steeped it in what he believed to be 
poison, and by false pretences procured from imprisoned royalists a letter of 
introduction and a passport to the king's army. Presenting these at St. Cloud 
on July 31st, he was taken in by La Guesle, the attorney-general, who had him 
watched that night ; but he slept like a child. Admitted next morning to the 
loyal presence, he offered a letter, and while Henry was looking at it, stabbed 
him in the abdomen. The king drew out the knife and struck the assassin's 
face with it, crying, "My God, the wicked monk has killed me !'' La Guesle 
dispatched Clement, whose body was thrown from the window to the soldiers 
beneath, and burned. 

The wounded man lingered for thirty-six hours. To Navarre, who came 
hastily in tears, he spoke with affection, urging his officers to recognize and be 
true to his successor. "To be king of France," he said, u you will have to turn 
Catholic. You must — and you will." His last hours displayed more dignity 
than his life. With him ended the house of Valois, which in the persons of 
thirteen successive kings had held the throne for two hundred and sixty years. 



T~ 







CHAPTER XXVIII. 



THE FOURTH HENRY. 




HNRY of Navarre was now the lawful ~3overeisrn 
of France; but his crown and sceptre were 
yet to win. The officers of the late king kept 
aloof ; they acknowledged his rights of birth, 
but thought these vitiated by his heresy. 
"Conform," they said; "submit to Rome, and 
we follow you." He answered, as he had done 
before, that he could not do it with the dagfgfer 
at his throat. Even if he had no regard to 
his conscience, his honor forbade ; better lose 
thirty crowns than that. To ask him to 
change his faith so suddenly was to imply 
that he had no faith to change. No; he would consider the matter; he was 
always open to conviction ; if a general council could be had, he would abide by 
its decision. Meantime he guaranteed the free exercise of the Catholic religion, 
with all the possessions and privileges of the Church. A contract to this effect, 
with other provisions little favoring the Huguenots, was signed on August 4th, 
and registered in the Parliament of Tours. Not satisfied with these concessions, 
Epernon and many others left him. By prompt action and with Marshal Biron's 
aid, he retained the Swiss mercenaries; but within five days the royal army was 
diminished by one-half, and it had become plain that the siege of Paris must be 
abandoned. 

He now issued an address to the French people. With the usual high- 
minded professions, it contained an argument the power of which is better 
appreciated in our day than it could be in his : "Consider how hard and unjust is 
this attempt to coerce me in matters of faith, when I, your lord and master, permit 
you to enjoy perfect freedom of conscience." It was the language of weakness 
appealing to strength, of a minority against superior numbers. He concluded with 
asking the prayers of his subjects that God would "enlighten his conscience," 
as well as direct his councils and bless his endeavors. He was obliged not only 
to make friends at once,. but to look forward, however reluctantly, to the distant 
but inevitable event of his so-called conversion. His support was feeble : the 

(4 '9) 



43Q THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Protestants were divided, and not all of them trusted or followed him. Some 
dreamed of a Reformed confederacy under foreign protection. Montmorency and 
other governors, thinking the king's cause hopeless, expected to see France 
break into fragments, and to become themselves independent princtes. If the 
League had been really united and ably led, Henry would indeed have been in 
straits; but its soul was gone with Guise, and here too each was for himself. 
Mayenne was heavy and slow ; and the Cardinal Bourbon, whom this faction 
presently proclaimed king as Charles X., was a tool and figurehead at best, and 
now a prisoner. In such times of confusion success falls not necessarily to the 
worthiest cause, but usually to the keenest brain and quickest hand. Through 
all these wars France produced no commanding genius, no general or statesman 
of the highest order ; but Henry IV. was the first man of his time, by qualities 
as well as birth the fit and natural ruler and leader of the afflicted land. 

Great was the joy in Paris over the news of the late king's end. The 
Duchess of Montpensier, a lady ready to lay aside her aristocratic pride on every 
due occasion, embraced the messenger, and regretted only that the victim did 
not know that she had sharpened the knife. She wished to substitute bright 
green for the usual court mourning. The town was with her ; fireworks and 
huge bonfires celebrated the happy event. The Jesuits proposed to raise the 
regicide's statue in the church of Notre Dame. The pope was equally pleased, 
of course, and praised the deed before his cardinals, comparing it to the most 
heroic sacrifices of ancient times, and even, for its supposed value, to the birth 
and resurrection of the Son of God. But however frantic his oratory, Sixtus V. 
was a politician, and had no wish to see the Most Catholic King become lord of 
all western Europe. He knew that Philip II. had designs on the French throne ; 
it suited him better to have the place occupied by a harmless elderly priest, who 
represented nothing but orthodoxy and an ancient family. Charles X. was a 
younger brother of the late Antony of Navarre, and an uncle of the rival 
claimant. 

BATTLE OF ARQUES. 

Having much ground to cover with a small force, Henry divided his army 
into three, and went north with barely eight thousand men, to await reinforce- 
ments promised from England. Thither Mayenne followed with thirty thou- 
sand, meaning to bring back the Bearnois, as this faction called the king whom 
they would not acknowledge, a pitiable prisoner. Couriers were appointed before- 
hand to hasten with the news to Paris, and windows on the street along which 
the triumphal procession was to pass were engaged at high prices. But the show 
did not come off as expected. 

The succors were delayed, and Henry, his position being insecure, was 
urged to retire into Germany or England. From this step, which might have 
'been his ruin, he was saved by his own resolution or the wise advise of Biron. 



™ 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 43t 

Jocosely lamenting his misfortunes, he called himself "a king without a king- 
dom, a husband without a wife, a general without an army-chest." But he went 
to work to fortify his position at Arques, a few miles from Dieppe and the coast 
A trench eight feet wide was dug around his camp, including a castle and a hospi- 
tal called the Maladrene ; within, earthworks were thrown up and cannon planted 




BATTI.K OF ARQUES. 



The enemy attacked on September 21st, 1580, under cover of a heavy fog, which 
concealed their movements. They gained a temporary success by a rus^e ; their 
German mercenaries, pretending to desert, were allowed to cross the trench and 






432 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

helped by Henry's Swiss to climb the earthwork. Having thus effected a lodge- 
ment, they turned on the Swiss, and, aided by two French regiments who rushed 
in, drove the defenders from the Maladrerie. A general assault was ordered, 
under which Montpensier's division gave way. Had Mayenne been as quick as 
his adversary, he might have kept his advantage ; as it was, Henry was in dan- 
ger. He cried, "Are there not fifty gentlemen brave enough to die with their 
king?" In the nick of time Chatillon, Coligny's son, came up with two small 
regiments of Huguenots. "Here we are, sire," he said; "we will die with you." 
The arrival of this reinforcement, and the lifting of the fog at the same critical 
moment, saved the day. The guns of the castle opened on the foe as the Calvin- 
ists raised their battle-psalm: "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered." 
Chatillon, with Biron, who had been wounded an hour before, drove the Germans 
from the Maladrerie. The discouraged royalists reformed their ranks, and 
turned on the foe with new ardor. After a fierce fight, in which Henry showed 
his usual valor, the Leaguers were forced to retreat. 

ATTACK ON PARIS. 

The moral effect of this victory was great : it raised the king's reputation 
and brightened his prospects. The pope said, "That Bearnois will win: he is no 
longer in bed than Mayenne is at his dinner." Five thousand English and 
Scotch arrived, with twenty-two thousand pounds from Elizabeth — the largest 
sum Henry ever yet had handled. Joined by his other armies, he entered 
Amiens, the chief city of Picardy, a province always bitterly hostile to the Prot- 
estants. Thence he marched on Paris, and took the wealthy faubourg of St. 
Germain, with much booty. Pillage was the custom of the times, and Sully 
gained three thousand crowns here. Chatillon, who had his father's murder to 
avenge, was extremely active. Nine hundred Parisians fell, and four hundred 
prisoners were taken. Among them was the prior of the Jacobins, who was soon 
after tried and convicted as an accomplice in the murder of Henry III. and for 
having praised it from the pulpit. This wretched priest was sentenced by the 
Parliament of Tours to the frightful punishment of regicides : his body was 
harnessed to four horses which were driven in opposite directions, and so torn 
apart. 

As Mayenne advanced from Flanders to relieve Paris, Henry retired to 
Tours, where he was acknowleged as king by two French cardinals and by the 
Venetian Republic. After securing Normandy, he attacked Honfleur, but left it 
to relieve Meulan, and forced the Leaguers and their Spanish auxiliaries to raise 
the siege. Meantime the pope had sent to Paris Cardinal Cajetan as legate, with 
three hundred thousand crowns, intended as a ransom for Cardinal Bourbon, 
otherwise Charles X. ; but Mayenne got possession of the money. These gen- 
tlemen always wanted all they could get from whatever source, and generally 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 433 

kept most of it. Unlike honest John Tompkins of the ballad, "Although they 
were rich, they desired to be richer." They also loved office and position and 
power, not only for the profit to be had thereby, but for the honor and dignity. 
As Henry's star rose, Mayenne was more willing to listen to his propositions ; 
but he could not bring himself to accept them and make peace, for he hoped to 
be able to snatch the crown himself. There were many other schemes and cross- 
purposes among the Leaguers ; but it is not necessary to dwell upon these, for 
they had no other effect than to protract the miseries of France, and they finally 
came to naught. 

BATTLE OF IVRY. 

The two armies met again at Ivry, fifty miles northwest of Paris, on March 
14th, 1590. Henry had about eight thousand infantry and three thousand horse ; 
Mayenne had twice as many, including seven thousand of Parma's men from 
Flanders, brought by the young Count Egmont. This nobleman, a devotee of 
the cause which had slain his father, insisted on fighting when Mayenne would 
have avoided it, and paid for his rashness with his life. Each army was arranged 
in a cresent. 

The horsemen of the League bore the heavy lance of chivalry : those of the 
king had only sword and pistol, He said to them, "Comrades, if this day you 
share my fortune, I too take all your risks. I am resolved to die or conquer 
with you. Keep your ranks, I beg you ; but if you should break them in the 
heat of the fight, rally at once. Should you lose sight of your colors, keep my 
white plume in view : it will lead you to victory and honor." They knew that 
these were no idle words. The Huguenots knelt while their chaplain prayed, 
and then both armies charged together. Macaulay's ballad, which has added to 
the deserved fame of this battle, may serve as a description of its beginning and 
end ; it is put in the mouth of one of the Protestant soldiers : 

Oh, how our hearts were beating, when at the dawn of day 
We saw the army of the League drawn out in long array, 
With all its priest-led citizens, and all its rebel peers, 
And Appanzel's stout infantry, and Egmont's Flemish spears. 
There rode the brood of false Lorraine, the curses of our land ; 
And dark Mayenne was in the midst, a truncheon in his hand. 
And as we looked on them, we thought of Seine's empurpled flood, 
And good Coligny's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood ; 
And we cried unto the living God, who rules the fate of war, 
To fight for His own holy name and Henry of Navarre. 

The king is come to marshal us, in all his armor drest, 

And he has bound a snow-white plume upon his gallant crest. 

He looked upon his people, and a tear was in his eye : 

He looked upon the traitors, and his glance was stern and high. 

Right graciously he smiled on us, as rolled from wing to wing, 

Down all our line, in deafening shout, " God save our lord the King." 




battle; of ivry. 



434 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 435 

"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may — 

For never saw I promise yet of such a bloody fray — 

Press where ye see my white plume shine amidst the ranks of war, 

And be your oriflamme to day the helmet of Navarre." 

Hurrah ! the foes are moving ! hark to the mingled din 
Of fife and steed and trump and drum and roaring culverin ! 
The fiery duke is pricking fast across Saint Andre's plain, 
With all the hireling chivalry of Gueldres and Almayne. 
Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, 
Charge for the golden lilies now — upon them with the lance ! 
A thousand spurs are striking deep, a thousand spears in rest, 
A thousand knights are pressing close behind the snow-white crest. 
And in they burst, and on they rushed, while, like a guiding star, 
Amidst the thickest carnage blazed the helmet of Navarre. 

It was not a royalist victory from the start. On the contrary, the weight and 
numbers of the Leaguers drove Henry and his cavaliers back. He shouted to them 
to turn and see him die, and led a few in a desperate charge. For some moments 
he was out of sight, hidden in the press of foemen ; his friends thought he was 
down. But his usual good fortune had not deserted him. The white plume ap- 
peared again ; his followers raised a mighty cheer, rallied, and dashed furiously on 
the enemy. The ranks of the League wavered, and then broke all along their line. 
Their generals fled like cowards ; Mayenne, to secure his own safety, pulled down 
a bridge behind him, leaving hundreds of his men to drown in the river or be 
slaughtered on its bank. The Swiss, who had taken no part in the fight, surren- 
dered; the Germans, whose leader was killed, offered to do the same, but were cut 
down with many of the Spaniards. The rout was complete and disgraceful. 
Now God be praised, the day is ours ! Mayenne hath turned his rein ; 
D' Aumale hath cried for quarter : the Flemish Count is slain. 
Their ranks are breaking like thin clouds before a Biscay gale : 
The field is heaped with bleeding steeds, and flags, and cloven mail. 
And then we thought on vengeance, and all along our van, 
" Remember St. Bartholomew ! " was passed from man to man. 
But out spake gentle Henry then, " No Frenchman is my foe : 
Down, down with every foreigner, but let your brethren go." 
Oh, was there ever such a knight, in friendship or in war, 
As our sovereign lord King Henry, the soldier of Navarre ! 

Ho, maidens of Vienna ! Ho, matrons of Lucerne ! 

Weep, weep, and rend your hair for those who never shall return. 

Ho, Philip ! Send for charity thy Mexican pistoles, 

That Antwerp monks may sing a mass for thy poor spearmen's souls. 

Ho, gallant nobles of the League ! Look that your arms be bright. 

Ho, burghers of St. Genevieve ! Keep watch and ward to-night. 

For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave, 

And mocked the counsel of the wise and the valor of the brave. 

Then glory to His holy name, from whom all glories are ; 

And glory to our sovereign lord, King Henry of Navarre. 



436 THE, STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Most of this description is accurate. As the pursuit began, Henry gave 
orders to " spare the French." The Spaniards were justly hated for their cruelties 
in the Netherlands, and the Germans, by their recent treachery at Arques, were 
supposed to have deserved their fate. Few regretted Bgmont, who had been base 
enough to disown his father's memory. On his reception in Paris, the president, 
wishing to compliment him, had praised the late admiral, who had been stadtholder 
of Flanders and a famous soldier: but the son replied, "Do not speak of him: 
he was a rebel, and merited his death." Apart from its filial impiety, this was a 
stupid speech, for those to whom it was made were in arms against their lawful 
king. Moreover, it was not true, as we shall see in another place. 

The only other eminent victims of this battle were two Germans — Schoni- 
berg on the king's side, the Duke of Brunswick on the other. The nobles of 
the League, as has been said, took excellent care of their precious selves ; but 
with their men it was another matter. The cavalry, who had sustained the 
whole fight, had a chance to escape when it was over : not so with the footmen, 
who had stood still, scarcely firing a shot, and were now cut down or taken. 
Some six thousand lost their lives, and as many were made prisoners : the 
remaining half of the rebel army was scattered in promiscuous flight. The 
victors lost but five hundred killed, and two hundred wounded. Sully, who 
captured Mayenne's standard, received no less than seven wounds ; but he recov- 
ered, to live over fifty years longer, and be for twenty of them an important 
figure in French history. Sixteen French and twenty Swiss colors, eight 
cannons, with all the ammunition and baggage of the camp, fell into Henry's 
hands. At ten that night he wrote to La Noue : "God has blessed us. To-day 
the battle came off. It has been fought well. God has shown that He loves 
right better than might. Our victory is entire. The enemy utterly broken. 
The Reiter fairly destroyed. The infantry surrounded. The foreigners badly 
handled. All the cornets and cannon taken. The pursuit carried to the gates 
of Mantes." Next morning he was playing tennis. 

As at least once before, he neglected to follow up his victory with the requi- 
site speed. Had he moved as quickly now as he did during the fight, he might 
have taken his capital and practically ended the war ; but it was his weakness 
to seek repose and pleasure after a victory. At this time Charles X., the nominal 
king of the League, died at Fontenay, having acknowledged his nephew's title. 
Coins of this fraction of a monarch exist, but he has no place in the list of 
French kings, the only one of that name and number having come to the throne 
two hundred and thirty-four years later. Still he had been useful to the Leaguers, 
and they were perplexed whom to put in his place, for they would not submit to 
Henry. 




HiSNKY iV. AT IVKVT 



437 



438 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

S1E3E OF PARIS. 

Paris had been well fortified when he reached it on May 7th, and was pre- 
pared to repel an assault ; so nothing was to be done but starve it into submis- 
sion. It was defended by five thousand soldiers and thirty thousand armed 
citizens ; the whole number within the walls was two hundred thousand, and there 
was food enough for a month. When this was gone, the convents were forced to 
supply the people for a fortnight from their reserved stores. The priests and 
monks bore part in the defense : thirteen hundred of them marched in procession, 
crucifix in one hand and gun or pike in the other ; and one of them, being awk- 
ward with his unfamiliar weapon, managed to shoot the secretary of the pope's 
legate, who had come out in his carriage to review them. These recruits probably 
gave up their supply of victuals to the public need with more reluctance than 
they exposed their bodies to the besiegers' bullets. 

By the end of June the famine became frightful. "A bushel of corn sold 
for a hundred and twenty crowns. The only bread, and that very scarce, was 
made of oats. Horses, dogs, asses, and mules were used as meat, and they were 
delicacies publicly sold for the families of the greatest lords. The poor fed on 
herbs and grass, which they picked up in yards and streets, and on the ramparts; 
these produced such cruel disease that many died. Excessive heat, following 
excessive rain, increased the general sickness." Wood for fire had given out, 
and meat — when there was any — was eaten raw. A dog and a man, both emaci- 
ated, fought in the street ; the dog won, and dined off the man's shrivelled car- 
cass. The horrors of Sancerre were repeated on a larger scale, and carried 
further. When the hides and parchments were all gone, slates were pounded 
into powder and mixed with water and a little bran. The Spanish ambassador, 
or some one else, remembered reading that in an eastern city, similarly 
beleaguered, bread had been made from bones : on this hint the graveyards were 
disturbed, and human skeletons turned into a hideous food. Bodies of famished 
children were salted for their parents' use. 

August came, and the survivors were scarcely able to clear the streets of 
corpses. The two hundred daily deaths increased fivefold; it is said that in this 
last month of the siege thirty thousand perished. Maddened by the sight of 
fields ready for the harvest, many went outside the Avails and snatched a handful 
of the ripe grain, heedless cf wounds and dangers. Fanaticism endured these 
extremities rather than submit to the humanest sovereign of his time. At an 
earlier period of the siege, Henry had allowed three thousand women, children, 
and old men, to pass through his lines. He now let his compassion override his 
interest. According to Sully, " He could not bear the thought of seeing the city, 
where he was destined to rule, become one vast churchyard. He secretly per- 
mitted whatever could contribute to its relief, and pretended not to notice that 
Ms officers and soldiers were sending in provisions, some to help their friends 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



439 



and relatives inside, others to make profit out of the need of the citizens." This, 
on the king's part, was good charity, but very poor warfare. At this rate, why 
besiege Paris at all ? If he thought to win over the citizens by his kindness, he 
was mistaken ; they still cursed him as the author of all their calamities. Yet 
he would not yield to the repeated entreaties of his soldiers, and especially of the 
Huguenots, to storm the city ; and this was chiefly, some thought, from fear of 
the awful massacre that would ensue, in revenge for St. Bartholomew. He said 
to the bishop of Paris, who came out to treat with him : " I would give one finger 
for a battle, and two for peace. I love my city; I am jealous of her ; I long to 
serve her ; I would grant her more favors than she asks of me ; but I would 
grant them of free will, and not be compelled to it by the King of Spain and the 
Duke of Mayenne." 

PARMA RELIEVES PARIS. 

At length the Duke of Nemours 
who had charge of the defense, sent 
word to his allies outside that he would 
be forced to surrender if not relieved 
in ten days. On this Mayenne 
advanced to Meaux, where he was 
joined by Alexander Farnese, the 
great Prince of Parma, then Philip's 
Governor of Flanders. In view of 
the approach of these forces, Henry 
raised the siege at the end of Au- 
gust, and marched to Chelles, more 
than half way to Meaux, that he 
might intercept the enemy on his 
way to Paris. Delighted at the 
prospect of an encounter with the 
foremost soldier of the age, he Th e **ince of parma. 

encamped on a hill, prepared for battle, and wrote to one of his lady friends, 
"If I lose it, you will never see me again, for I am not the man to retreat or 
fly." But there was to be no battle. Parma, on arriving in the neighborhood, 
got a view of Henry's army, saw that it was equal to his own, and said to 
Mayenne: "Those are not the ragamufnans you told me of; they are well 
appointed, and they have cannon." So he determined not to fight, but to 
resort to strategy, in which he was more than a match for Henry. The king 
sent him a challenge ; he answered that he understood his own business, and 
had not come so far to take counsel of an enemy ; it was not his habit to 
engage when he could get what he wanted without it ; let Henry force him 




44 o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

to a battle if lie could. On September 6th lie outwitted his antagonist by 
drawing out his army as if for attack, and then suddenly turning towards 
Lagny, which he took next day, crossing the Marne by a bridge of boats. 
Henry, enraged but helpless, saw his garrison at Lagny destroyed, and the way 
made clear for the relief of Paris. 

A campaign of skirmishes followed, in which the king could do little more 
than hang on Parma's flanks and cut off stragglers. 

The invader stormed Corbeil on October 16th, which freed the passage of 
the Seine ; haying sacked it, he wished to garrison the place with Spaniards, but 
Mayenne objected. This town and Lagny were soon retaken by one of the 
king's lieutenants. In November Parma returned to the Netherlands. Henry, 
while pursuing him, deviated from the road to follow one of those roman- 
tic adventures of which he was so fond. He had cast an admiring eye on 
Gabrielle d'Estrees, afterwards intimately associated with his history, but at 
this time shy. He now went twenty-four miles out of his way, almost alone, 
through a hostile country, and visited the lady in the dress of a farm laborer. 
It was a delicate attention which she never forgot. "After this," he said, 
''nothing will go wrong with me." Such were his recreations on the march. 

Before the end of this year, 1590, he took Corby, a town on the Somme, 
near Amiens. In remoter regions he was less fortunate. Indeed, he still had 
reason to fear the breaking up of his kingdom into bits, through the ambition 
of the petty princes, favored by the confusions of the time. The Duke of Savoy 
had taken Aix in the southeast, and in the northwest Brittany was claimed by 
the Duke of Mercceur, one of the never-satisfied Lorraines, in right of his wife. 
The Prince of Dombes was acting there for the king, and had built a fort by the 
sea, but was driven off by a Spanish fleet. 

The religious question, which was inextricably intertwined with the politics 
of the time, added to the king's embarrassments. Bordeaux, through its coun- 
cillors, begged him to make more speed in the way of enlightening his con- 
science, and his Catholic adherents often reminded him that he had promised, a 
year before, to call a council within six months for the attainment of that import- 
ant end. He excused himself by referring to the toils of war, his battles, his 
siege of Paris ; and he was obliged to add that for the present the royal cause 
needed Protestant aid from abroad : why cut off loans and reinforcements from 
England and Germany by hastening a decision as to his faith ? Yet he knew 
that he was only gaining time, and that these delays could not go on forever. 

Meanwhile the councils of the League were distracted. Certain acts of 
violence in Paris provoked reprisals, and ended in the downfall of the Sixteen 
and the discredit of the extremists. The Duke of Nevers abandoned faction for 
loyalty, and was made governor of Champagne. The Duke D'Aumale attacked 
St. Denis, was repulsed, and killed at the door of an inn whose sign was The 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



44i 



Royal Sword : some importance was attached to this trivial coincidence. Henry, 
on his part, besieged Chartres from February 16th to April 19th, 1591 ; it fell 
at last, chiefly through the valor and skill of Chatillon, of whom great things 
were expected. His death within the year, at the early age of thirty, was a 
heavy loss to the Protestants, who believed that he would have equalled or even 
excelled his illustrious father. The name of another leader has not appeared of 
late; Conde, Henry's cousin, 
was poisoned in 1588. These 
wars, intrigues, and hatreds 
were fatal to many of the best. 
As the season advanced, 
the king took Noyon, and his 
officers won other successes in 
the north and south. A new 
pope sent a new legate, who 
published a decree command- 
ing the clergy to leave all 
places which recognized 
Bourbon, and otherwise in- 
vaded the liberties of the 
national Church: this 
aroused much wrath, and 
injured the cause it was 
meant to help. The Parlia- 
ment of Paris accepted the 
bull, but those of Tours and 
Chalons ordered it to be 
burned, and denounced obedi- 



to 



it as high treason. 




Young Guise escaped from 
confinement at Tours, not at 
all to the satisfaction of Ma- 
yenne, who feared in his nephew a rival claimant to the throne. 



MARIA DE MEDICIS. 
Second ivtfe of Henry IV. 



HENRY'S RASHNESS AT AUMALE. 

In the early autumn the Prince of Anhalt brought six thousand Germans, 
and the Earl of Essex half as many English. With an army increased to 
forty thousand, the king began on October 1st the siege of Rouen, which his 
father's troops had taken from the Protestants twenty-eight years before. Here 
he performed many deeds of valor, and won the admiration of Marquis Villars, 
who commanded the defense. This officer, who was moved to equal activity 



442 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

by so chivalrous an example, declared that Henry deserved a thousand crowns,, 
and regretted that his religion prevented true Catholics from serving him. But 
in January, 1592, Parma entered France again, and the king went to meet him, 
leaving Biron to carry on the siege. At Auinale he suddenly encountered the 
whole Spanish army. Following impulse instead of reason, he charged with 
but a few hundred horsemen behind him. The nearest regiments dashed forward 
to cut him off; the white plume was recognized, and the cry went through the 
whole host, "Navarre!" If Parma had acted promptly, he would have been, 
taken or slain ; but the Italian, who did nothing without a plan, suspected a 
trap, and forbade a general advance. As it was, the foolhardy king was in immi- 
nent peril, and barely escaped with the loss of half his men. He was the last- 
to reach a bridge which offered the only way of retreat : as he crossed it, a bullet 
inflicted the only wound he received in all his battles. The injury was luckily 
not severe, and he made his way to Dieppe with the survivors, no two of whom 
could give the same account of the skirmish. He laughed off his rashness, which 
perhaps brought him no less honor than discredit : but Parma, who regarded 
war as a science, was deeply disgusted. When blamed for neglecting to improve 
so rare an opportunity, he replied with contempt, "I supposed I had to do with a. 
general, not a mere captain of dragoons." Another slur he passed on his antag- 
onist, observing that "it was a fine retreat ; but for my part, I never engage in 
a place whence I am obliged to retire." That is, he would not fight unless he- 
was sure to win ; and from this maxim the able tactician never departed. 

MORE OF PARMA'S STRATEGY. 

The approach of the Spaniards and Leaguers forced Henry to raise the 
seige of Rouen, in which he had lost three thousand men. He placed his troops 
across the enemy's path and offered battle ; but Mayenne, who had encountered 

him twice, had little of 

That stern joy which warriors feel 
In foeman worthy of their steel. 

Parma appeared to accept the challenge, but again eluded the king by drawing" 
off his force under cover of the cavalry. To free the lower Seine he took Caude- 
loc : while thus engaged, a bullet from the walls entered his arm at the elbow 
and passed down to the wrist. He uttered no sound, and went on with his observa- 
tions, till the blood dropping from his hand attracted the attention of those about 
him ; but the wound disabled him for a time, and contributed to his death within 
the year. 

Mayenne, who had the command in this emergency, led the army into the 
peninsula of Caux, a narrow and dangerous place. Henry promptly blocked 
the entrance, cut off supplies, and thought he had them shut up in a trap. But 
though Parma's body was weakened, his mental resources had not failed: he 



— 



THE STORY OP OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



443 



procured boats and rafts from Rouen, built a temporary bridge in the night, and 
crossed the river in safety. Having now accomplished his task, and being needed 
in the Netherlands, he returned thither, much to the disappointment of May enne 
and the League, who wished to have everything done for them and to make no 
returns. Parma told them that they were unreasonable and ungrateful, since he 
had saved their two chief cities, and Spain had borne nearly the whole expense 
of the war. Yet he meant to invade France again, had not his death removed 
the most dangerous of Henry's foes. 




«^Ks3=*Si«s•C«£?** WXI, 



HENRY IV. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 



ABJURATION. 




OTH parties, with reduced forces, now carried on the 
war in a desultory way. There were no more 
great battles like Ivry, no more terrific sieges 
like that of Paris ; only chance encounters, the 
taking and retaking of small places, the inter- 
ruption of normal business, and increasing 
misery. Marshal Biron was killed at the siege 
of Epernay, July 26th, 1592 : he was the most 
prominent of the king's generals, marked with 
the scars of seven battles, and a scholar of some 
repute : the great Cardinal Richelieu was his 
godson and namesake. He used to keep a sort 
of diary, and record in it every notable event or 
remark : it grew to be a proverb, when any one said something out of the com- 
mon, "You found that in Biron's pocket-book." 

Negotiation now largely took the place of arms. Every one wanted peace; 
but the question was, On what terms ? Matters seemed no nearer a settlement ; 
the king's cause was by no means won, and fresh perils sprang up around him. 
His Catholic supporters, offended at his long delay in settling the religious ques- 
tion, were growing cool or turning away: they disliked Protestant alliances, and 
were not easily reconciled to the idea of a Protestant sovereign. The Estates- 
General, called together by Mayenne, met in Paris in January, 1593, and sat for 
months. Its authority, disowned by Henry, was .acknowledged by Spain and 
the Pope. Philip II. claimed the crown for his daughter, who was a grandchild 
of Henry II. The nobles scouted this suggestion, for the Salic Law of France 
forbade succession through a female line : even the Bishop of Senlis, who had 
praised the murder of Henry III., cried out that the proposal was " the greatest 
evil that could have befallen the League, and confirmed all the Politicals had 
said, that interest and ambition had had more to do with the war than zeal for 
religion, and that in thinking to serve the Church they had been the blind tools 
of a foreign king." These plain remarks made an impression, which was deep- 
ened when the Spanish- ambassador admitted that Philip meant to give his daugh- 
ter in marriage to the Archduke of Austria. The assembly agreed that this 
(444) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 445 

would never do. The envoy then said that a French prince might be sub- 
stituted, to be named and elected king within six months. Who should it be? 
The young Duke of Guise. 

The critical time had come. To embarrass his enemies, Henry, through 
his Catholic supporters, had proposed a conference with some of the deputies ' t 
Mayenne and other Leaguers, dreading Spanish dominance, had favored the idea, 
and certain bishops were in session at Surenne. To enliven the dullness of these 
proceedings and remind people that he was not to be left out of the account, the 
king attacked Dreux early in June, and took it after a month's siege. 

THE KING OF FRANCE MUST BE A CATHOLIC. 

It would be tedious to recount all the steps which led to an inevitable end. 
Only a member of the national Church, a Romanist, could mount and hold the 
throne of France : this had been apparent from the start, and became clearer 
every da}'. The Huguenots numbered perhaps one-sixth of the population, and 
they were not increasing. The first force of the Reformation-wave had been 
spent long before ; and the crown had not, as in England, such power or prestige 
that it might change the religion of the people. Personally, creeds and forms 
were of small consequence to Henry, whom nobody ever mistook for a pietist. 
His belief was a matter of inheritance, of tradition, of association : as he had 
several times intimated, what held him to it was rather a sentiment of honor 
than a conviction of conscience. And now it was a question — or rather it was 
hardly a question any longer — whether this private sentiment ought not to give 
way to considerations of the public welfare. What other hope was there for France,, 
what other solution of the problems of the time ? Not one which would not 
make bad worse. He was a public man, and public life makes its own require- 
ments. Abjuration, from the standpoint of Calvin's theology, was a crime; from 
that of statesmanship, it was a virtue. 

We need not regard Henry as one who nobly sacrificed himself for the gen- 
eral good. He was a popular hero, not a moral hero. Ambition and self-love 
were not wanting in his nature : he always considered himself, though he con- 
sidered others too. It is only bjr contrast with the baser spirits round him that 
he shines so superior. There have been far better men and kings than he ; but 
to one better ruler there have been thousands worse. Above all others he was- 
the man of his time in France : could he have met the requirements of the occa- 
sion if he had been a severe religionist ? 

His case was not the case of Jerome of Prague or Cranmer, who under 
terrible pressure renounced for a moment the cause to which they had given their 
hearts and lives. Some of his Protestant councillors backed up the advice of their 
Catholic friends. Sully's view was this: "I see but two ways out of your pres- 
ent straits. One is to put a force on nature and inclination. You must pass. 




446 



BEAUVA'S CATHEDRAL. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 447 

through a million difficulties, fatigues, pains, perils, labors, be always in the saddle 
and in arms, helmet on head and sword in hand. Farewell to repose and pleasure, 
to love and mistresses, to games, dogs, hawking. You can come out only by a 
multitude of combats, taking of cities, great victories, and vast shedding of blood. 
That is one way. The other is to accommodate yourself in the matter of religion 
to the will of most of your subjects. So you would escape all these pains and diffi- 
culties — in this world. As for the other world," he added, with a backward glance 
to the catechism they had both been taught in childhood, "I cannot answer 
for it." And then they both laughed, as if they had been free-thinking philos- 
ophers of a much later period. There were no theoretical skeptics in their time ; 
but Henry and his minister were men of the world, not devotees. Coligny might 
have advised differently ; but Coligny had been long in his grave. The king 
expressed the feeling of many besides himself when he gazed from neighboring 
heights on his rebellious capital, and said, "Paris is worth a mass." 

Since he had so little faith to change, it is to his credit that he was so long 
in changing it. The delay was against his interests, for he might have had 
peace before on this condition. The main motives which had restrained him — 
so far as we may analyze any human motives — were two that always go 
together ; a manly pride and a regard for appearances and reputation. He was 
unwilling to be dictated to, and he did not wish to appear light. The change, 
once made, was to be made forever ; or at least — since the matter which was 
called spiritual was to him mainly worldly — for this present life. There was 
an unconscious sarcasm in his last words to his new instructor: "The way you 
now make me enter I leave only by death." Perhaps he thought that beyond 
the grave he should be a Huguenot again. 

HENRY RECONCILED TO THE CHURCH. 

His resolution, once taken, was carried out as speedily as might be. Care 
was taken to surround with trappings of solemnity what all thinking men 
knew to be a farce. The king expressed his wish for instruction in the points 
in dispute between the two systems ; he received it. He had his doubts ; they 
were removed one by one. During the process he did not always restrain his 
mocking humor. He offered to pass the point of Prayers for the Dead, remark- 
ing that he was not dead yet, nor in a huny to be. As to Purgatory, he said, 
"I will receive it to please you, knowing it to be the bread of priests." But at 
the end he became serious. "You have not satisfied me as much as I desired, 
but I put my soul into your hands, and I pray you, have a care." The bishops, 
being royalists, were more anxious to have the business settled than to lay too 
heavy burdens on their convert. 

On Sunday, July 25th, 1593, in the church of St. Denis, he was received 
into the bosom of the Church of Rome, confessed to the Archbishop of Bourges, 



448 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

and heard mass. It was an occasion of local and almost national rejoicing; can- 
nons were fired, and the soldiers and people shouted in delight. But the con- 
science of which Henry made too little must have pricked him when he abjured 
the "errors" of his youth, the teachings of his mother, the faith of Conde and 
Coligny, and said that he repented of having held them. The peril of enforced 
conformity, if not, of all union between Church and State, lies in this, that men 
to gain an end will use words which they do not mean, regarding the most solemn 
professions as an empty form ; so that reverence and the sense of' truth are 
weakened, and sincerity becomes impossible except to the unthinking. An act 
that is to one's interest loses all flavor of piety, and should not be cumbered with 
its pretense. But these thoughts, obvious and familiar now as the rule of three, 
were scarcely dreamed of three hundred years ago. Only through its blunders 
does the world learn wisdom. 

The king's recantation aroused very various feelings in different circles. 
The severer Calvinists regarded him as a lost soul. Their men of affairs, while 
regretting the perversion of their leader, knew that it was for their prosperity 
and peace. To the Catholic royalists generally, and to the mass of Frenchmen, 
the removal of the obstacle which had kept Church and throne apart brought 
nothing but relief. Only a few serious and high-minded men felt, as did one of 
the prelates, that " it would have been better had the king remained in his reli- 
gion than changed as he has done ; for there is a God above who judges us : 
respect to Him alone should sway conscience, and not a regard to crowns and 
kingdoms." But this idealist would hardly have been counted a practical man, 
and was wholly out of touch with the French public opinion of his time. 

THE POPE AND THE JESUITS NOT SATISFIED. 

Another class of persons, from widely different motives, offered vehement 
objections to the abjuration, even before it was made ; for of course it had been 
announced in advance. The partisans of Spain and of the pope wanted no half- 
hearted converts like Henry, at least not when these were likely to gain so much 
by coming into the fold. They were sharp enough to distrust his sincerity and his 
promises, and they wanted a king who would be their tool : to this end they were 
willing to see France kept in turmoil and misery for any length of time. The 
legate threatened the clergy throughout the land with excommunication if they 
accepted the u pretended conversion of the Bearnois," or honored the iniquitous 
ceremony of St. Denis with their presence. This had little effect, for the Galli- 
can Church of those days, as has been remarked before, was jealous of its par- 
tial independence, and resented too much papal meddling in national affairs. 
The Archbishop of Lyons and some others refused to acknowledge the king till 
he should receive absolution from the pope, which, as we shall see, was not easy to 
obtain. The Jesu'ts, as devoted to the Spanish interest, were especially violent. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



449 



Barriere, a layman of low degree, encouraged by the liead of this order at Paris y 
went to St. Denis to murder Henry as he came out of the Church after his abjura- 
tion; but his heart failed him. He followed the court from place to place, having 
abundant opportunities, but still wavering, till he was arrested at Melun, where he 
confessed his purpose and was executed. His accomplices were still safe in Paris. 
Having made with the League a truce of three months from August ist, 
the king sent the Duke of Nevers to Rome to procure his absolution. Clement 
VIII. refused to consider the matter or receive the ambassador in public; the 
clergy who had gone with him were threatened with the Inquisition for having 




ROCHELLE, ONCE THE STRONGHOLD OF FRENCH PROTESTANTISM. 

taken part in absolving the relapsed heretic at home, so that Nevers was obliged 
to keep them in his own quarters and to protect them from arrest in leaving the 
papal territories. This high-handed treatment encouraged the League, but dis- 
gusted all others, and arrayed the national spirit more firmly on Henry's side. 

As the king's submission to the Church ended the Protestant wars in France, 
it might appear that we should now take leave of him and his dominions. But 
his recantation, as most men knew, was little more than nominal. His ideas, 
aims, and sympathies had not really changed ; he was still the representative of 
toleration, of progress, of comparative liberty. The conflict between the two 



45o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

systems, the mediaeval and the modern, that of Rome and that of rational states- 
manship, continued in France for five years more, and we may well trace its 
course to the end. 

CORONATION OF HENRY. 

The truce expired November ist, and Henry refused to extend it. Mayenne 
still held the capital, but others were growing tired of resistance to their lawful 
sovereign. Meaux, Orleans, Bourges, Lyons, Aix, and other cities were given 
up to him. On February 27th, 1594, his coronation took place in the 'cathedral 
of Chartres. We read with amusement that, as the flask of holy oil from which 
the ancient kings had been anointed was out of reach, being in the hands of the 
League, another was procured from Tours, which an angel had brought from 
heaven to heal St. Martin in equally remote ages. In our view it matters little 
what oil or what formalities were employed on the ablest man who had ruled 
France for centuries; but these ceremonial details were then, and in monarchical 
lands are still, accounted part of the divinity that doth hedge a king, and none of 
them were here omitted. A splendid array of princes, bishops and nobles graced 
the occasion; it was as gorgeous and joyous a spectacle as that of his abjuration 
seven months before. But oue part of it must have jarred on the nerves of some 
who stood by, and wrenched (we may trust) the conscience of him who was the 
central figure there. The old coronation oath contained a promise to root out all 
heresy and heretics. These words on Henry's lips were a lie, and he used them 
simply as an idle but inevitable f ;rm. He was no persecutor and no fool: no man 
knew better what had caused the miseries of France for fifty years. He meant to 
abate those miseries, to restore prosperity and peace; and he had no mind to turn 
on his old associates. It was not to be another Francis II., Charles IX., or Henry 
III., the tool of Lorraines and legates, that he had labored so long and so hard. If 
a little perjury came into the account, he would not stick at that ; but he had his 
own plans all the same, and intended to carry them out. 

HENRY ENTERS PARIS. 

All this time there was much agitation in Paris. The city was tired of 
being shut up, royalist writers and intriguers were active, and the cause of the 
League grew weaker with every day. Mayenne, feeling himself unsafe there, 
withdrew, leaving a Spanish garrison. The new governor, Count de Brissac, 
had been fierce for Guise and against Henry III., but Henry IV. won him over. 
He earned his pay, for the negotiations were carried on under great difficulties, 
and the betrayal of his trust was attended with extreme danger. At four in the 
morning of March 23d, the gates were opened and the royal troops marched in. 
Never was a city taken more quietly. Two citizens and a few foreign soldiers 
who made a vain resistance were the only lives lost. The capital awoke to see 
the king riding about the streets in high good humor. The fickle populace, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY, 



451 



quickly recovering from their amazement, welcomed him almost as heartily as 
they had saluted Guise six years before. As he tried to enter the great cathedral, 
they crowded upon him so closely that the guard would have driven them back. 
" No, no/' he cried : "they are starving to see a king. Let them knock me about 
a little." As he wrote to a friend, " An old woman of eighty seized me by the 
head to kiss me. I was not the last to join in the laugh.' 1 His gaiety, his kind- 
liness, the unsurpassed 
charm that did so much 
to make him beloved 
and famous, won all 
hearts that could be 
won. The rebel city 
was now almost as 
loyal as Rochelle or 
Tours. 

The beautiful 
traits in Henry's char- 
acter shone out in his 
liour of success. Never 
was there a better illus- 
tration of the saying 
that good manners are $ 
good morals. His pop- 
ular qualities — his 
familiarity with inferi- 
ors, his easy condescen- 
sion that never seemed 
to condescend, his con- 
stant cheerfulness, his 
abounding humor, — 
came from no studied 
policy, no superficial 
politeness : they were 
the natural growths of 
a good soil, springing 
luxuriantly from a rich 
and generous heart. Many have been purer, more truthful, more rigidly upright, 
than be : some have been more disinterested ; nowhere out of France, and rarely 
in it, has monarch or private man shown more that was winning and lovable. 
There was no malice in his nature, nothing of personal grudge or vindictiveness. 
In an age in which the strong arm and the hard heart ruled, when secret 




ENTRANCE OF HENRY IV. INTO PARIS. 



452 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



murders and ferocious cruelty were matters of course, his gentleness anticipated 
our modern ideas and manners, and seemed to predict the advent of a better era 
which was yet far off. Much as he loved battle, he hated to punish in cold 
blood. He had a noble maxim which savored rather of the pulpit than the 
camp : " The satisfaction one gets from revenge lasts but a moment : that which 
clemency yields is eternal." If his Huguenot troops had stormed Paris four 
years earlier, he could hardly have prevented a frightful massacre : now all was 
to be forgiven and forgotten. He proclaimed a universal amnesty, and said 
that he would gladly give fifty thousand livres to buy back the two French lives 




MONT PELVOUX. 
It was here, amid these mountains and canes, the French Protestants would hide from their persecutors. 

that had been lost. Not one drop of native blood, he felt, should have stained 
his triumph. 

TRIAL OF THE JESUITS. 

Yet there were some in Paris who could not be allowed to stay there. A 
few leaders of treason and disturbance were sent away : all others were received 
into the king's service, whatever their past record. The Spanish garrison of 
four thousand, with their commander the Duke of Feria, were given a safe-con- 
duct to the frontier. As they marched past the palace, on the day of the king s 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 453 

entrance, he waved his hand from a window and called out, "My compliments 
to your master — but do not take the trouble to come back." - One body of yet 
more dangerous enemies remained. The Jesuits would not take the oath of 
allegiance, moderate as were its terms. The university cited them for trial, and 
its rector petitioned the Parliament for their expulsion. The cause was pleaded 
on July 12th, 13th, and 16th, by Arnauld, on behalf of the university, and Dolle, 
representing the parish priests or regular clergy of the city, who were joined in 
the prosecution. These speeches, setting forth the treasons and crimes of the 
order, its constant agency in stirring up sedition and inciting to murder, make 
interesting reading yet. The fiercest Protestants have never said harsher things 
of the Jesuits than did these Catholic advocates of a city that would not endure 
the Reformed worship within its walls. Arnauld called them "traitors and 
assassins:" Dolle pointed out that they had disturbed the whole discipline of the 
Church, headed the villainous Sixteen in Paris, turned women against their 
husbands in Switzerland, and made themselves intolerable everywhere. Their 
orators had abundant recent evidence to draw upon, and used it freely. The 
Jesuit defense was prudently delayed, and the consequent sentence still further. 
At this they were foolish enough to rejoice, as at a victory ; but their triumph 
did not last long. Early in December, when the king had just returned from 
Picardy and was receiving visitors, a young man named Chatel, son of a draper, 
attacked him with a knife. The blow merely cut his lip : the would-be assassin 
was seized, and confessed that the Jesuits had told him it would be a good deed 
to kill the king. Henry's spirits were raised rather than dampened by the 
incident. "Ah," he said, as he wiped off the blood; "other mouths have told 
me about these gentlemen: now my own shall convict them." Chatel bore the 
punishment of a regicide : his father's house was pulled down and a monument 
erected on the spot. One Jesuit was hanged: the number should have been larger, 
for one or two were known to have been connected with the previous attempt of 
Barriere. The whole society was banished from France, and stigmatized by the 
Parliament as "corrupters of youth, disturbers of the public peace, and enemies 
to the king and state." The clergy denounced the teaching of murder as a 
devilish heresy, and warned all religious orders that the king must be respected 
and obeyed. The theologians of the Sorbonne had already decided that the 
king's absolution was sufficient, and that resistance to his authority was mortal 
sin. Harlai had been restored to his place as first president of the Parliament, 
and all Paris was now submissive and loyal. Henry availed himself of this 
opportunity, the first fair one that had come to him, to grant partial toleration to 
the Huguenots, by re-enacting the edict of 1579. 

A few military events had occurred during the autumn. Spanish troops 
had taken La Cappelle, a town on the Dutch frontier; on the other hand, 
Honneur in Normandy was reduced, and other places, till now held by the 



454 TH B STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

League, surrendered. The chiefs of that faction, tired of standing out against 
the inevitable, were coming in one by one : true to their principles, each of them 
had his price, and got it. For instance, the Duke of Elbceuf, one of the numerous 
and expensive Lorraines, demanded a pension of thirty thousand francs and the 
government of a province, which were cheerfully granted. In this way the king 
expended sums exceeding six million dollars, and in purchasing power worth ten 
times as much as that amount now. This new huge system of bribing kept 
France poor for a while, but Henry, who lacked neither courage nor brains^ 
thought it the best Avay to restore domestic peace. He asked one of his, earlier 
recruits of this kind, "What do you think of seeing me in Paris again?" 
"Sire," the lawyer answered, "it is giving to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." 
' l Giving ? ' ' the king repeated. " Not exactly. You sold them to Caesar, and made 
a good bargain of it." Mayenne and Mercceur alone held out, and were too 
powerful to be overcome at once by force, though ready to join hands with any 
foreign foe. 

WAR WITH SPAIN: BATTLE OF FONTAINE. 

In January, 1595, the king, against the judgment of his more prudent 
advisers, declared war agaiust his constant enemy, Philip II. Velasco, the Consta- 
ble of Castile, crossed the Alsatian border, took Vesoul, and was moving toward 
Dijon with eight thousand foot and two thousand horse, having joined Mayenne 
with fourteen hundred, when at Fontaine he came upon Henry, who was recon- 
noitering with a few cavaliers. The meeting was so unexpected, and the reports 
of his scouts so sudden, that the king had no time to put on his armor. The 
attendants brought his swiftest horse and urged him to ny ; but he said he 
wanted their assistance, not their advice. Hastily rallying his small force, he 
dashed so furiously upon the enemy's horse, dispersed in several squadrons, that 
he drove each back in turn, and retired with little loss before the generals could 
get their wits and their troops together. It was the affair of Aumale over again, 
with perhaps more motive and a happier result ; for Velasco was so much alarmed 
by this lightning-like stroke that he retreated into Germany, much to Mayenne's 
disgust. "Hang yourself," Henry wrote to one of his boon companions, "that 
you were not at my side in a combat when we fought like madmen ;" and to his 
minister Mornay, "Less than two hundred horse have put to fight two thousand, 
and driven ten thousand foot out of my kingdom." 

This escapade and its extraordinary success helped to reduce the number of 
his enemies by two— one at home, and one abroad. Mayenne abstained from all 
hostilities and meditated submission ; and in September the papal absolution 
was published. Its chief conditions were that the Roman worship should be 
established in Beam, all property of the Church restored, and the heir to the 
throne educated as a Catholic. Some of these things Henry had already done, 
others he was ready to do — as far as he could ; for it was not easy to recover 




CHARLEMAGNK. 



455 



456 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

confiscated estates from their new owners. Clement had wanted better terms, but 
the king was now strong enough to refuse them. He declined positively to annul 
the edict of toleration, to admit that his absolution by the French bishops was 
invalid, to recognize any other than spi itual value iu that of the pope, or to 
receive foreign investiture, as if Rome had power to give or take away his crown. 
At this time Fuentes, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, took Cambrai 
and other towns in Picardy. Henry rode northward from Lyons to oppose him. 
In Paris the authorities begged him not to expose his precious life. " Why," 
said he, "unless I lead, nobody follows. If I had money to pay a few more 
regiments, I would not be in danger so often. I came here at a trot, and I am 
going off at a gallop ; but I want cash." Having procured a supply, he went at 
full speed to Amiens. At the gate the town Council met him with a set address. 
<( king!" the spokesman began, "so great, so merciful, so magnanimous — " 
" Yes," he interrupted, "and so tired. Let us have the rest another time." He 
, was just sitting down to dinner when another deputation came in with another 
orator, who opened fire at once. "Sire, Hannibal, when leaving Carthage — " 
The king broke the thread of this discourse also. " Hannibal had dined," was 
his continuation of the tale, "and I have not." 

THE KING'S SUCCESSES. 

He was at Monceaux in January, 1596, when Mayenne came to make his 
submission. He too commenced in the approved pompous style. "Sire, I am 
the humble debtor of your royal bounty. You have delivered me from the arro- 
gance of the Spaniard — " when Henry jumped up, embraced him fervently, 
seized his arm, cried, "Come, see my garden," and hurried him through the 
grounds. The duke, who was very fat and very lazy, was soon panting and 
exhausted. The king stopped, as if struck by a sudden thought, and asked, 
"Cousin, am I too fast for you ?" " Ah, sire," the other puffed, "at th ; s rate I 
shall soon be dead." Henry laughed, offered his hand, and said, "That shall be 
your only punishment." It was far less than Mayenne deserved and would have 
been likely to get from any other monarch ; but in France the great nobles were 
hardly less powerful than the king — some of them, as we have seen, were at times 
greater than the king ; and their persons and estates were almost sacred. 

In the spring of 1 596 Calais and some other places were taken by a Spanish 
army under the Archduke Albert, and Henry had gained nothing in exchange 
but La Fere. He sent to Elizabeth for aid ; she offered it, on condition that 
Calais, when retaken, should be garrisoned by her troops, which was equivalent 
to its cession to England. There was no jesting in his reply. The proposal, he 
wrote, must "have been inspired by those who understand not the promptings of 
your spirit. Permit me still to believe that you disdain to measure your friend- 
ship by the standard of self-interest, when the urgency of affairs is such that no 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 457 

time can be lost in bargaining." The spirited dignity of this rebuke secured 
better terms. An alliance was made between France, England, and the United 
Provinces. 

Henry's treasury was now empty. He wrote that his shirts were torn, his coat 
out at elbows, and his pot often empty, so that he was forced to dine with friends 
who had more to eat than he. In this extremity he placed Sully in charge of 
the finances, which had been vilely managed ; and that able minister soon raised 
five hundred thousand crowns, not by taxation, but by recovering stolen money 
from the thieves who had collected the taxes. It was the beginning of vast 
reforms. At an assembly of notables which he convened at Rouen in October, 
1596, he said that, as they all knew to their cost, when he was called to the 
crown he found France half ruined, and quite lost to Frenchmen ; that he aimed 
to be its liberator and restorer ; and the present need was to save the realm from 
financial ruin. His words were heeded, and by Sully's management good results 
followed. 

AMIENS LOST AND WON. 

In March, 1597, he received bad news. Amiens had been taken by a curious 
stratagem. Spanish soldiers, disguised as peasants, and carrying sacks of walnuts, 
followed a heavy wagon which was driven to one of the city gates and halted 
there. One of the men dropped his sack ; the nuts rolled out, and the guard fell 
to scrambling for them. The Spaniards drew their weapons ; others, concealed 
without, rushed to the attack. The portcullis was lowered, but the wagon pre- 
vented its fall ; the assailants forced their way in and cut down the defenders of 
the place. It was one of the famous surprises of history. 

Henry, who had been enjoying the pleasures of Paris during the winter, 
said to his favorite Sully, " I have played too long the King of France ; it is 
time to be the King of Navarre again." He hastened to Amiens, which was 
attacked and defended with great valor. The siege lasted near six months; 
Mayenne took part in it, and showed more ability than he had usually done on 
the other side. The Spanish commander, Porto Carraro, was killed, after com- 
plimenting his assailants. The Archduke came again from Flanders with a 
great army ; but Henry, without raising the siege, defeated Albert in what he 
called "the finest encounter that has ever been seen." "The warlike Cardinal," 
Henry wrote, "came on very furiously, but went off very sneakingly." On 
September 25th Amiens surrendered. The king at once marched to Brittany 
against the Duke of Mercosur, who lost no time in making his submission. All 
France was now loyal and, united, except the recent Spanish conquests in the 
north, and a small corner in the southeast, which the Duke of Savoy claimed ; 
this matter was not settled till two or three years later. 



4,8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



EDICT OF NANTES. 



It is to Henry's credit that lie did not wait for a formal declaration of peace 
to right the wrongs of his early friends the Huguenots. He had already, as we 
have seen, revoked the persecuting edicts of 1585 and 158S, and restored the 
partial toleration granted by' that of 1579. But this was not sufficient, and in 
the regions lately held by the League they were still subjected, not only to an- 
noyance, but to grievous oppression. In many separate treaties with these rebel- 
lious towns and nobles, the Icing had not been able to set aside the prohibition of 
the Reformed faith; for his embarrassments were great, and he could not do 




VIEW OF NANTES, 
Where thefj.in.om edict was issued by Henry IV., in U98, for nearly a century the charier of Huguenot freedom. 

everything at once. But now that the whole land was at his feet, — or rather in 
his hands, for he was always quick to raise those who knelt before him — the 
situation was changed. It mattered not to his generous spirit that since his ab- 
juration his former allies put the worst construction on his motives, stood sul- 
lenly aloof, and looked on him as a foe or a tyrant : he would show them that 
they were mistaken. On April 15th, 159S, he signed the memorable Edict of 
Nantes, which guaranteed the sacred liberty of conscience. It removed the civil 
disabilities under which Protestants had labored, opened all public schools, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 459 

employments, and honors to them, and permitted their worship wherever it 
had been held before. If not perfect as a measure of toleration — for the least 
religious restriction is hateful to the modern mind — it was the best France 
had ever known, and under it the Huguenots thrived and lived in tolerable 
peace for eighty-seven years, though Henry's successors were continually limit- 
ing their privileges. 

This great measure was not carried without a struggle ; in fact, it was 
driven through by the king's sheer will. The Parliaments of Paris, Bordeaux, 
Toulouse, and Rouen refused to register the edict. Rouen sent deputies to argue 
the matter with Henry. A charming story is told of their reception. He was on 
the floor, romping with his children, when they entered. Wholly unabashed, he 
said, "I am playing the fool with these babies ; but I am ready to play the wise 
man with you." He rose, and led them to another room. When they had 
stated the case, he said, "I am the head of this realm ; you have the honor to be 
members of the body politic. It is my business to command, yours to obey. 
This is my edict : it is to be executed." It was despotism enforcing toleration 
with a high hand. That is not the way we do now ; but in those days the repub- 
lican idea was practicable only in Switzerland and Holland. Elsewhere, consti- 
tutions either did not exist, or were little regarded. If an absolute monarch used 
his power with wisdom and benevolence, that was the best that could be looked 
for, and far more than was usually found. 

PEACE, OF VERVINS. 

Meantime the Spanish tyrant, who was neither wise nor benevolent, was 
nearing the end of a reign that had lasted far too long. The pope and his legates 
were anxious that this useless war between two Catholic powers should cease ; 
for if Spain and France exhausted each other, what was to prevent the Turks 
from carrying their conquests beyond Hungary ? Philip II. found out at last, 
what he ought to have had the sense to see long before, that he had enough — 
and too much — to do in the Netherlands. The peace of Vervins, which was 
concluded May 2d, 1598, restored Calais and the other Spanish conquests, and 
enabled Henry to say that he had gained more towns by a stroke of the pen 
than he could have taken in a long campaign. 

Thus released from the toils of war, he gave his mind to the series of reforms 
and internal improvements which raised France from her low estate. The love 
his people bore toward him was matched by the frantic hate of bigots. In the 
next twelve years eighteen more attempts were made upon his life, and in 1610 
the dagger of Ravaillac removed the foremost sovereign of Europe. Had he 
lived longer, he might probably have averted the wretched Thirty Years' War, 
which desolated Germany, retarded the world's progress, and ruined the Protest- 
ant cause in so many states. His memory was long and dearly cherished in the 



460 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



land he served so well ; but his unworthy descendants did what they could to 
undo his work. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, more than 
half the commerce and manufactures of the country were destroyed, and its 
most useful citizens driven out to enrich other lands, among them England and 
America. 




FRENCH SOLDIERS. 



CHAPTER XXX. 




IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 

HE Netherlands occupy a much smaller space 
on the map than in the history of freedom. 
Within a region which might be enclosed 
in almost any one of our American states, 
a land without natural defenses and exposed, 
to the constant inroads of the ocean, was 
waged for three-quarters of a century a war 
that will be remembered with wonder and 
admiration so long as men cherish liberty. 
Motley has told the story in seven large and 
eloquent volumes ; we shall have to trace its 
outline far more rapidly. 

At the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
tury Holland, Brabant, and Flanders offered 
to the rest of Europe a model of industry, 
prosperity, and the arts of peace. Their 
narrow confines were crowded with cities, whose commerce and manufactures 
went through the known world. The eastern portions had been wrested from 
the sea, and were the home of the most expert sailors and fishermen. The 
merchant guilds were ancient and wealthy. The towns and provinces had 
charters of remote date, which secured them a larger measure of freedom 
than existed elsewhere, except in the Swiss cantons. Their rulers had till 
lately been content with liberal taxes, and meddled little with these privileges 
of local self-government. There was much mental activity, much self-assertion 
of the bold democratic spirit, much occasional turbulence. The current of life 
ran warm and swift : Dutchmen were not a sleepy race. The southern provinces 
(now Belgium) were largely of another blood, and had much less seacoast ; but 
the severance was not so marked as in later years. 

Jacqueline, Countess of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault, who died in 1437, 
was the last native and inoffensive sovereign of these parts. Her dominions 
passed to Philip of Burgundy, ironically called the Good, who by fair means or 
foul got possession of Flanders,, Brabant, and sundry duchies, counties, and bar- 
onies. He began the bad business of violating the constitutions which he had 

(461) 



4 6i THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

sworn to guard, and thus set a vicious precedent to his successors. His son, 
Charles the Bold, played a prominent though a foolish part in history ; a would-be 
conqueror abroad, he was a tyrant at home, and valued his provinces merely for 
what he could squeeze out of them. Dying in 1477, he left no son, but a daugh- 
ter Mary, from whose helplessness her subjects extracted a grant called the 
" Great Privilege : " it was destined to be disregarded like the older ones. She 
was married to Maximilian, son and successor of the German emperor ; and their 
son, Philip the Fair, married the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. From 
this union came Charles V., King of Spain, Emperor of Germany, and possessor 
of more other titles than we care to remember. In this way half Christendom 
came under a single head, and the pernicious connection of the Tow Countries 
with Spain, which was to cost so much blood and treasure, was brought about. 
The arrangement was against all common sense and all sound economy, for one 
man should have no more lands to govern than he can manage properly, and 
■each nation has laws, customs, and a temper of its own. The Spaniard and the 
Hollander had nothing in common except mutual dislike, which soon rose to 
violent hatred : they were different in race, habits, opinions, and character. One 
was a feudal aristocrat, who despised all labor except fighting : the other was a 
"busy trader, proud of his gains and his independence, who used the sword only 
to defend his rights, and regarded his masters as lazy, greedy, and meddlesome 
fools. The two countries ought to have been kept wide apart : but in those 
•days the welfare of states was little regarded, and monarchs were in office for 
what they could get from it — for their own sake, not that of their subjects. 

CHARLES V. 

Charles V. had considerable ability and enormous power — far more than 
should ever have been entrusted to any but the cleanest hands, the wisest head, 
and the most generous heart. By comparison with his wretched son, his char- 
acter appears almost respectable. He studied the arts of popularity and knew 
how to preserve appearances in a way, so that he was never detested in the 
Netherlands as he deserved to be, though he introduced the hideous system 
which caused so much misery,- and more lives were taken there in cold blood by 
his orders than by Philip's. He was outwardly the greatest monarch of his time : 
he had a multiplicity of affairs on hand, and stood for other interests besides 
persecution. But he was far from the modern idea: he hated reform and 
liberty : if he had been absolute in Germany, the new movement there might 
have met the fate that befell it in the south. Where he could, he supported the 
■ claims of Rome Avith fire and sword. 

It must be remembered that the Netherlands, though in area so small a 
fraction of the possessions of these monarchs, and really owing them less obe- 
dience than they could legally command elsewhere, were important by reason 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



463 



of wealth and population. Here, as has been said, were a number of the chief 
cities of Europe, enriched by a steady stream of commerce. Therefore, as a 
bank to be frequently drawn upon, the provinces received many royal attentions. 
The republican idea was not yet born ; a sovereign's visit, still more his temporary 
residence, was esteemed an honor, whatever evils came in its train. The nobles 
enjoyed the pomp which girds royalty about : the people, perhaps beyond all 
other nations, delighted in 
shows, processions, festival 
Nobles and popul 
though con stan 
submitted cheerfully 
ship by which they 
gained nothing, 
and were loyal till 
loyalty became im- 
possible. Charles 
V. had wit enough 
to foster the trade 
of Antwerp, Am- 
sterdam, and the 
other towns, know- 
ing that the richer 
his subjects, the 
more he could gain 
from them. Philip 
II. ruined whole 
provinces for an 
idea that was false 
and pestilent. 
The patience 
with which these 
states long en- 
dured the vilest 
oppression is 
almost as marvellous as 
the courage and persist- 
ence they afterwards 
displayed in defending the most sacred rights of humanity. 

THE DUTCH REFORMATION. 

The collision came about largely, though very gradually, from religious 
causes. As much as in any land except Bohemia, the Reformation had been 




464 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

anticipated in these provinces. There .was no earl}- war like those of the Albi- 
genses in Languedoc, no sporadic resistance like that of the Vandois, off and 
on for centuries, in northern Italy ; but from about 1240 the country had been 
full of Cathari, Waldenses, and other alleged heretics. Under various names and 
with differing opinions, they protested against the corruptions of the Church, 
and insisted on following private conscience. The most frightful severities 
were employed against them: in Flanders "a criminal whose guilt had been 
established by the hot iron, hot ploughshare, boiling kettle, or other logical 
proof" — for the most idiotic methods were adopted to detect a heretic, as long after 
to expose a witch — "was stripped and bound to the stake: he was then flayed, 
from the neck to the navel, while swarms of bees were let loose to fasten upon 
his bleeding flesh, and torture him to a death of exquisite agony." These 
barbarities had little effect, unless to stimulate the zeal of the survivors : 
Waldo's French Bible was translated into Dutch verse, and the numbers of the 
heretics grew apace with the luxury and immorality of the clergy. 

AVhen the Reformation came, many in these provinces were glad to receive 
it, and some were ready to go much further than the Reformers. Erasmus, 
the leading scholar of his age, who "laid the egg that Luther latched," was 
born at Rotterdam : his writings had their full effect upon Dutch students. The 
emperor, much offended by the success of the new doctrines, put forth in 1521 
a ludicrous edict against Luther and his followers : "As it appears that the 
aforesaid Martin is not a man, but a devil under the form of a man, and clothed 
in a priest's dress, the better to bring the human race to hell and damnation, 
therefore all his disciples and converts are to be punished with death and for- 
feiture of all their goods." Two years later, as has been told in another chapter, 
the first martyrs of the Reformation were burned at Brussels. 

Some disorders and acts of violence among the opponents of Rome helped 
to bring the cause of reform into disrepute, and to give an excuse to the per- 
secutors. Some obscure sects, whose origin is remote and doubtful, are said 
to have deserved part of the odium in which they were long held. Jeremy 
Taylor, writing as late as 1647, deliberately excluded them from the toleration 
which he claimed for all other Christian bodies. The so-called Peasants' War, 
which convulsed parts of Germany in 1525 and later, was a series of horrors. 
A crowd of wild fanatics, led by a baker of Harlem and a tailor of Leyden, 
crossed the border, seized Minister in Westphalia, and shocked the world by 
their murders and debaucheries. Their prophet called himself King of Sion, 
took to himself fourteen wives, and made several attempts on Duch cities. On 
a cold night in February, 1535, the good people of Amsterdam were alarmed by 
seven men and five women who ran through the streets in a state of nature, 
shouting, "The wrath of God!" On being arrested, they declared that they 
were "the naked truth." They and niaii}^ other victims of this delusion, who 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 465 

should have been confined in asylums, were put to death. The mania spread 
throughout the Netherlands, and lasted for some time. Similar phenomena, 
though usually on a smaller scale, have occurred at every period of great 
religious excitement: they were common in England during the Commonwealth, 
and extended to America in later days. 

FIFTY THOUSAND MARTYRS. 

The emperor did not wait for these excesses before beginning his bloody 
work at large. The Inquisition was introduced, if not at once under its own 
name, yet with the whole array and fury of its processes. By repeated edicts 
all gatherings for worship, even of a few friends, and no less the private reading 
of Scripture and conversation on religious topics, were denounced as capital 
offenses. Even Spanish methods could hardly go further. The best that can 
be said for these laws is that they did not accomplish their purpose ; but that 
was not the fault of those who framed and executed them. They "were no 
dead letter. The fires were kept constantly supplied with human fuel by monks, 
who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of arguing with them. 
The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. 
Still the people remained unconvinced. Thousands of burned heretics had not 
made a single convert." 

It would be easy but useless to fill our pages with details of these judicial 
murders. Some of the victims were lunatics ; a few may have been criminals ; 
but the great mass were doubtless quiet persons in humble life, who wished to 
serve God peaceably, as their descendants have since done at home or in Eng- 
land and America. The victims of persecution in this reign and within these 
provinces numbered no less than fifty thousand. The list of the Anabaptists 
alone, or of those claimed as such, with what is preserved of their trials and 
testimonies, fills thirteen hundred large columns in a work compiled by Thielem 
Van Braght in 1660, and lately translated and reprinted in a huge quarto by 
the Mennonites in Indiana. 

Such wholesale slaughters did not then excite the horror the}' move in us. 
In fact, it required more than fifteen centuries for professed Christians to learn 
what were the cardinal points of the morality taught by the Founder of their 
religion. In the view of emperors, popes, the clergy, and the masses generally, 
these were not truthfulness, justice, purity, and mercy, but simply orthodoxy,, 
which meant a slavish submission to authority in Church and State. The regent,. 
Queen Mary of Hungary, whom Erasmus praised as a "Christian widow," went 
but little beyond the general opinion in the advice given to her brother in 1533 : 
she thought that "all Protestants, even if repentant, should be dealt with so 
severely that the error might be at once extinguished — only taking care that the 
provinces were not entirely depopulated." Her nephew, Philip II., went still 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

further, and was willing and even anxious to de- 
stroy the whole population. In his view a ruinous 
solitude was far better than tilled fields, busy canals, 
and crowded streets, wherein three million people 
worshipped God in a fashion not the king's. 

In 1 549 this promising prince visited Brussels, 
that his father's Dutch subjects might have the joy 
of gazing on their future lord. The occasion was 
celebrated by a new edict, confirming all those 
which had gone before. When he came to his 
power six years later, he was thus able to say, 
"You see, I make no new laws: I merely enforce 
the excellent ones under which you have been 
living." These were such as to stifle intellect, to 
strangle conscience, to sap the foundations of a 
state, and reduce the Netherlands to a smaller and 
poorer Spain. But the Netherlands had a mind of 

its own, which was yet 
to be reckoned with. 

ABDICATION 
OF CHARLES V. 

In 1555 the world 
was astounded by the 
news that the great 
emperor meant to abdi- 
cate. But he had his 
reasons. Though not 
yet fifty-six, he was an 
old man. A king at 
fifteen and a Caesar at 
nineteen, he had led a 
hard and exhausting 
life. He had been in 
many campaigns and 
still more plots; he 
had shed a vast deal of 
blood; and he had 
eaten far too many 
early breakfasts and 
late suppers. It was 

TOWN HAL,L, VEERB. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. . 467 

not his conscience that tronbled him, but mainly his stomach. Amid all 
his intrigues and ambitions, he had given much of his mind and time to 
victuals and drink. He used to wake at five, consume "a fowl seethed in milk 
and dressed with sugar and spices," and then go to sleep again. His noon dinner 
never had less than twenty dishes, and he sampled them all. Two heavy meals 
followed, the last at midnight or later. After the manner of his kind, any appe- 
tite was a sufficient reason for its prompt and full indulgence. The active habits 
of a soldier, with constant attendance at mass and vespers (which he probably 
considered the chief preservation of health), enabled him to go on in this way 
longer than another might ; but he paid the penalty at last. He was now- bilious, 
gouty, asthmatic, scrofulous, and had the stone. Besides, his affairs had riot 
gone well of late. He had been pushing back the ocean like Canute's courtiers, 
fighting against heaven and manifest destiny, spending vast sums on tasks that 
ought not to have been attempted. So he determined to withdraw to a monastery 
in Spain, tired in body and mind : there he was to linger three years, wearying 
for old scenes and activities, finding his only solace in political despatches and 
his collection of clocks, dwindling in brain and spirit, and to die at length in the 
alleged odor of sanctity. 

The only reason for regretting this step is found in the fact that he left his 
place — or some of his places — to a smaller and worse man than himself. He did 
not succeed in getting his son elected to the empire; but Philip's title was un- 
questioned in, Spain, parts of Italy, and the Netherlands. The change was fortu- 
nate for Germany, which, though henceforth presided over by fourth-rate men, 
escaped the worst of all possible rulers ; but it was unlucky for the Netherlands, 
since the new potentate, thus cut off from affairs in central Europe, could give 
the more time to destroying thought, conscience, and industry along the Scheldt 
and about the mouths of the Rhine. 

The abdication took place at Brussels on October 25th, 1555. It was a great 
and gorgeous occasion, a spectacle of solemn joy ; but we are less inclined to 
linger over it with admiring awe than did the crowds who gazed upon the setting 
and the rising sun of majesty. They saw an ugly old man with a shaggy beard, 
a hanging under lip, a protruding jaw, and a few snags of broken teeth, but with 
something of command in his brow and eye: bent and crippled, he leaned heavily 
with one hand on a crutch, with the other on some one's shoulder. Next him 
stood " a small, meagre man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a 
narrow chest, and the shrinking, timid air of a habitual invalid." Artists and 
flatterers have tried to make Philip appear royal, but it was not in him : he never 
looked, thought, felt, or acted like a real king. Place him beside his rivals and 
enemies, Elizabeth of England or Henry of Navarre, and see how huge the 
contrast ! He was but the parody of his father — a human rat, forever gnawing 




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THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 469 

and undermining ; clothed, alas, by the irony of fate with the power of Jove to 
rain down tempests and lightnings on the unhappy land. 

As the emperor entered the great hall of the palace, he leaned 011 the arm, 
not of his feeble son, but of a tall and well-made youth, then known only as the 
greatest noble of the provinces, but destined to an immortality as glorious as 
that of Philip should be vile. This man took his seat in the assemblv, but was 
called forward, when the first speech was over, to support Charles while reading 
his farewell address. He was twenty-two, dark and handsome, with a small head 
and a deep brown eye. As he stood there in view of all, with Philip at his 
father's left, none dreamed that these two coming men were to make each other's 
lives a burden, and to stand forever in history as the opposite ]3oles of thought 
and character, the incarnations of political light and darkness. It was William 
of Nassau, Prince of Orange, the future hero of freedom, the father of his 
country, the founder of the Dutch Republic. 

SACK OF ST. QUENTIX. 

As yet, and for some time to come, there was no thought of revolt. Lords 
and Commons, as has been said, were patient, conservative in temper, and loyal 
to their tyrant. Philip remained nearly four years in the Netherlands. During 
this period he spent a few months with his wife, the unhappy Mary of England, 
whom he had married in 1554, and forced that misguided country to join him in 
a war against Henry II. of France. In these campaigns he won success and 
reputation, chiefly through the valor and skill of his Flemish general, Count 
Egmont. Colignv, who defended St. Quentin, was defeated and made a prisoner, 
with his brother D'Andelot. The city was taken on August 27th, 1557, and its 
sack was one of the most horrible on record. Every man in it was butchered. 
The women were stripped of nearly all their clothing, that the}' might not carry 
off a coin or a piece of bread. The soldiers, in mere wantonness of cruelty, 
wounded the faces and cut off the arms of man}-. In this condition, by the 
king's express order, thirty-five hundred of them were driven out of the town 
two days later, to perish or recover as they might. The town, or most of it, was 
burned, and not one person who had been born in France left alive among its 
ruins. But Philip, who, though no fighter, was on hand to claim the credit and 
the fruits of victor}', was careful to have all the relics removed from the clnirches, 
and masses said over them in the cathedral, while the murdering and mutilating 
went on outside. In his view the treasured relics of a supposed sairt long 
dead was infinitely precious, while living and defenseless Christians by the thou- 
sand deserved nothing better than to be slaughtered or slashed by those to whom 
they had given no offense, beyond living in a place which shared the common 
fate of Avar and siege. They were non-combatants ; there was no principle at 
stake, nothing but a question of language and proprietorship between two selfish 



470 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



kings. If the heartless Spaniard could act thus to the mere subjects of a rival, 
where no question of religion was at stake, what was to be expected of him when 




his fero: 
aroused ? 

In 1558 a French arm.}" 
took Dunkirk and ravaged the 
Flemish border, avenging on 
innocent peasants the cruelties 
the Spaniards had committed at 
St. Ouentin. Egmont met them 
at Gravelines in July, and a 
battle which was for sometime 
doubtful ended in a complete 
victory. Alva, who had advised 
against it, taunted the count 
with his imprudence in engag- 
ing ; what would have happened 
if they had been beaten? Angry 
discussions followed, and the 



PROTESTANTS DRIVEN FROM THEIR HOMES, TAKE UP 
THEIR ABODE IN THE MOUNTAINS. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 471 

quarrel of the lords emphasized and intensified the natural jealousy between the 
men of the provinces and those of Spain. 

DEPARTURE OF PHILIP. 

By the summer of 1559 the king had seen enough of his father's native 
land, and determined to return to his own, leaving as regent his half-sister, 
Margaret, Duchess of Parma. He gave his parting commands to an assembly 
convened at Ghent on August 7th, and announced that the edicts "for the extir- 
pation of all sects and heresies" were to be strictly enforced. When the deputies, 
in their answering speeches, asked for the withdrawal of the foreign troops, and 
stated that the supplies had been voted on this condition, he was much surprised 
and offended. His anger rose to fury on receiving a paper signed by Orange, 
Egmont, and other leading nobles on behalf of the States-General ; it protested 
against the "pillaging, insults, and disorders" of the soldiers, which had been so 
atrocious in many places as to drive the people from their homes. Philip flung 
out of the room, exclaiming that he too was a Spaniard ; did they expect him 
to leave the country and give up all pretense of governing it ? It would have 
been much better for himself and all parties concerned if he had done just this. 

He soon found it desirable to temporize and make fair professions ; but as 
he was about embarking, he turned fiercely on Orange and accused him as the 
author of this resistance to the royal will. The prince replied mildly that as a 
member and officer of the Estates, he had merely taken his proper part in their 
deliberations and actions. Philip seized his arm, shook it, and hissed, "Not the 
Estates, but you, you, you !" using a form of the pronoun belonging only to 
menials. In consequence of this insult, William paid his farewell respects 
from the wharf at Flushing. Had he placed his foot on the royal vessel, it is 
not impossible that he might have been carried to Spain against his will, and not 
soon or easily have got home again ; for the despot was prompt to resent opposi- 
tion as treason, and to punish it in his own irregular way. 

BURNINGS IN SPAIN. 

He had bad weather on the voyage : some of his ninety ships went to the 
bottom, and others had to be lightened. Much of the wealth which he had ex- 
tracted from the provinces, products of the famous Flemish looms and other trap- 
pings of royalty, went overboard ; as a Dutch satirist expressed it, Charles and 
Philip "had impoverished the earth to enrich the ocean." The dangers he es- 
caped could teach him but a single lesson : his precious life had been saved that 
he might carry out his great mission of suppressing heresy. So he gave a new 
start to the Inquisition, and celebrated his return and his marriage to Isabella 
of France by two of those villainous "acts of faith" wherein the court and the 
clergy sat in state to witness the roasting of Christians in the name of Christ. 



472 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



flnsEi 



A young nobleman, fastened to one of the stakes, cried out as the king passed 
hiin, "How can you thus look on and let me be burned?" One of Philip's 
admirers has preserved his answer: "If my own son were as wicked as you, 
I would carry the fuel for his burning." His father's chaplain and almoner had 
been among the condemned, but was fortunate enough to die in prison : the 

corpse, with an effigy, was solemnly 
handed over to the flames. It was one of 
his chief grudges againt his Dutch sub- 
jects that they had the bad taste not to 
admire and approve these spectacles. 

We have here the materials for a 
rsecutor. A feeble frame, dis- 
active exercises ; a cold and 
narrow, pettifogging 
mind ; and a 
-=j tenacious, un- 
;- bending will. 
■--" Other bigots 
have extorted 
our qualified 
respect by 
their stern vir- 
tues: Philip 
was a libertine 
and a liar. His 
religion put 
no restraint 
upon his vices, 
supplied not 
the least in- 
centive to 
generous sym- 
pathies and 
worthy deeds. 
In an age 
when diplo- 
cle;me;nt marot macy was a 

series of tricks, when every prince and senate was trying to outwit the others, 
his policy was the most tortuous and treacherous in Europe. This colossal 
egotist had no sense of honor, of reverence, of gratitude, of loyalty ; he thought 
himself above the laws which earth or heaven had made for common men. To 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



473 



be his friend was as dangerous as to be bis enemy. He bad but one idea : tbe 
king was absolute and sacred, and he was tbe king. Resistance to his will, or 
even remonstrance, was treason, sacrilege, blasphemy. If it had ever occurred 
to him to differ with the pope and the system then in vogue, something — prob- 
ably the whole machinery of tyranny — would have broken. What he took for 
religion was the hobby which he chose to ride : the mass was to be crammed 
down men's throats, the cause to be pushed by edicts, by cannon, by antos-da-fe, 
because it was his royal will ; it was right, because he said so. 




l.—The rack. 



INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE, FROM THE TOWER OF LONDON. 
-Block and axe. 3. — Scavenger's daughter. U. — Leg irons. 5. — Necklace. G. — Thumb screw. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 




ON THE WAY TO WAR. 

'HE administration of the Dnchess Margaret lasted 
through eight years of increasing misery and dis- 
content. During the first five of these years her able 
prime minister, the Bishop of Arras, was tne real 
ruler ; he became Cardinal Granvelle in 1561. With 
the usual trickery and self-interest, this man served 
his master and the cause of despotism, and incurred 
much inevitable odium in doing so. New bishoprics 
were formed, and hated as the agencies of persecu- 
tion. The wholesale violence of the edicts may be 
judged from a passage of one of them, which made 
accusation equal to proof. "If any person, being not 
convicted of heresy or error, but greatly suspected 
thereof, and therefore condemned by the spiritual 
judge to abjure such heresy, or by the secular mag- 
istrate to make public fine and reparation, shall again 
become suspected or tainted with heresy, although it should not appear that he 
has violated any of the above commands, such person shall be considered as re- 
lapsed, and punished with loss of life and property, without any hope of mitigation 
of these penalties." Such was the spirit of the Inquisition, and of Philip's whole 
course : the desire seemed to be to take guilt for granted, and to destroy as many 
lives as possible. Yet the new doctrines spread faster than ever among the middle 
and lower classes. Many fled to Germany and to England, now a safe asylum : 
more remained to brave their fate. "The chronicles," says Motley, "contain 
the lists of these obscure martyrs ; but their names, hardly pronounced in their 
lifetime, sound barbarously in our ears, and will never ring through the trumpet 
of fame. Yet they were men who dared and suffered as much as men can dare 
and suffer in this world, and for the noblest cause which can inspire humanity. 
Fanatics they certainly were not, if fanaticism consists in show without corre- 
sponding substance. For them all was terrible reality. The emperor and his 
edicts were realities ; the axe, the stake, were realities ; and the heroism with 
which men took each other by the hand and walked into the flames, or women 
sang a song of triumph while the gravedigger was shovelling the earth upon 
(474) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



475 



their living faces, was a reality also." For many years the usual punishment 
for one sex was burning, for the other burying alive. 



HERESY-HUNTING. 



The most active of the heresy-hunters was Peter Titelmann of Flanders, 
who vastly enjoyed his work. The sheriff asked him one day, "How can you go 
about alone, arresting people everywhere, when I need a strong armed posse?" 
"Why, Red Rod," the inquisitor replied, ''you deal with bad folks : I seize only 




BLOIS, WITH CASTT/E. 
Memorable as a home of Catherine di Mcdicis. 



the harmless, who let themselves be taken like lambs." "Very good," the 
sheriff retorted; "but if you arrest all the good people and I all the bad, who is 
to escape?" Many stories are told of Titelmann's exploits. He burned a 
weaver of Tournay for copying hymns from a Geneva book, and a family of 



476 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Ryssel for not going to mass. As a boy prayed at the stake, a monk told him. 
i;he devil, not God, was his parent. The flames rose ; the child said to his father 
that he saw heaven opening and angels calling them. The monk cried, "You 
lie : hell is opening : you see ten thousand devils dragging you in." 

These horrors had been borne for forty years by most with wonderful 
patience ; but it was not in human nature that they should rot provoke some to 
acts of violence. Le Bias, a craftsman of Tournay, was moved in 1561 to protest 
publicly against the mass. After taking leave of his family and asking them 
to pray for his mad enterprise, he went to the cathedral, snatched the consecrated 
bread from the priest who held it aloft, broke and trampled it, and made no 
effort to escape. After frightful tortures and mutilations he was roasted over a 
slow fire. 

The foreign troops continued to be a nuisance. In 1560 the Zealanders 
refused to repair the dykes, saying that they would rather drown than endure 
the insolence of the Spaniards. The regent and her minister yielded to pressure, 
and the soldiers were for a time removed. 

Egmont and Admiral Horn had long hated the cardinal, as indeed did nearly 
everybody else in the provinces, regarding him as a main author of their evils. 
In 1563 Orange joined them in letters to the king, setting forth Granvelle's 
unpopularity. Philip consulted the Duke of Alva, who expressed his rage 
against ''those three Flemish seigniors," and said, "Cut their heads off, or dis- 
semble with them till you can do it." This advice was equally characteristic of 
the giver and acceptable to the receiver. Two of the heads were destined to fall 
within five years, and it was neither Alva's fault nor Philip's that the third did 
not drop too. The three leading nobles of the provinces now withdrew from the 
regent's council of state, and did not return to it till Granvelle had been recalled 
and left the country, amid general rejoicings, in 1564. 

ORANGE SPEAKS OUT. 

In October of this year the martyrdom of a preacher, who had been a monk, 
caused a riot at Antwerp: the executioners, the guard, and the magistrates were 
stoned and driven from the spot. The Catholic officials of Bruges protested 
against Titelmann and his irregular cruelties. Three months later Egmont was 
about to start for Madrid, and the council were debating as to the tenor of his 
instructions. No one had much to say except the Prince of Orange. Usually 
prudent and reticent, he now amazed them all by the plainness and vigor of his 
utterance. He said that he was a Catholic (so were all the nobles as yet), but 
he could not look quietly on at these doings. Corruption was everywhere, even 
in the highest places ; it was eating out the vitals of the land. Justice had 
become a byword, the judges were knaves; and he mentioned names. Reform 
was needed ; honest men must be put in office. As for religion, the council of 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



477' 



Trent was despised everywhere : its decrees could never be enforced here, and 
it would be ruinous to try. The king ought to know this: what was the use 
of sending an envoy of Count Egmont's rank and fame, unless to tell him the 
unvarnished truth ? Tell him, then, that " this whole machinery of placards 
and scaffolds, of new bishops and old hangmen, of decrees, inquisitors, and 
informers, must be abolished at once and forever. Their day was over. The 
Netherlands were free provinces, they were surrounded by free countries, they 
were determined to vindicate their ancient privileges." 




FOUNTAIN IN THE PARK OF LA TETO DO. 

This speech so alarmed old Viglius, the president of the council, that he 
had an apoplectic stroke next morning. New instructions were drawn up, mid- 
way between the original ambiguities and the frank statements of Orange. Eg- 
mont, who was abler with the sword than in diplomacy, accomplished nothing, 
and on his return was reproved by William for neglecting his duty. The canons 
of Trent were published, though their enforcement was resisted in many cities. 
The laymen in an assembly at Brussels wished to repeal the severest enactments 



478 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

against Protestants ; the prelates and theologians, of course, opposed this. Viglius 
wrote thus to Granvelle : " Many seek to abolish the chastisement of heresy. If 
they gain this point, the Catholic religion is done for ; for, as most of the people 
are ignorant asses, the heretics will soon be the great majority, if they are not 
kept in the true path by fear of punishment." Such was the reasoning of those 
who did not understand the foundation on which true religion rests. 

The inquisitors of Louvain wrote to Philip for aid and further instructions, 
complaining that only two of them were left, as three had been made bishops. 
He told them to go on, but that, for the avoidance of publicity and of the encour- 
agement that might come from crowds, the heretics might be drowned in tubs in 
their prisons, with their heads tied between their knees. He wrote to everybody — 
even to Peter Titelmann, praising his efforts " to remedy the ills religion was suf- 
fering." The Inquisition was to be revived, to do its work with more force than 
ever. 

Great was the commotion, widespread the indignation, at this tyrannical 
defiance of the public will, this contemptuous overriding of the public rights. 
There was a stormy meeting of the council of state. The younger nobles, over 
their wine, made many treasonable speeches. Frequent anonymous notes called 
on Orange, Egmont, and Horn to stand out as defenders of the people. The 
presses teemed with protests, satires, invectives ; pamphlets and handbills 
" snowed in the streets." Montigny, Berghem, and young Mansfeld refused to 
enforce the decree in their districts. The cities of Brabant, by boldly insisting 
that they had never admitted the Inquisition, managed to escape it for the present. 
Other regions were less fortunate. Adequate description of the general feeling 
requires such poetical prose as that of Mr. Motley : " The cry of the people in 
its agony ascended to heaven. The decree was answered with a howl of execra- 
tion. There was almost a cessation of the ordinary business of mankind. Com- 
merce was paralyzed. Antwerp shook as with an earthquake. A chasm seemed 
to open, in which her prosperity and her very existence were to be engulfed. 
The foreign merchants, manufacturers, and artisans fled from her gates as if the 
plague were raging within them. Thriving cities were likely soon to be depopu- 
lated. The metropolitan heart of the whole country was almost motionless." 

THE COMPROMISE AND THE REQUEST. 

On November nth, 1565, two notable events occurred at Brussels. The 
regent's son, Prince Alexander of Parma, who was to play a great part there in 
later years, was married, amid immense festivities, to the Princess of Portugal; 
and twenty men of rank, among them probably Louis of Nassau and Sainte 
^Aldegonde, after listening to a Huguenot sermon, formed a league to resist the 
Inquisition. Out of this grew the so-called Compromise, whose signers, while pledg- 
ing themselves to resist foreign domination, asserted their loyalty. Orange and 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 479 

the greater nobles bore no part in this, but within two months it had some two 
thousand names. A petition, or " Request," was drawn up by the confederates 
in March, 1566, and handed to the regent on April 3d by Count Brederode, a 
descendant of the ancient sovereigns of Holland. The two or three hundred 
cavaliers who arrived with him or on the following day were magnified by rumor 
into an army of thirty-five thousand, ready for war at once. It is a pity that 
this was not a fact. 

The Request merely protested against the Inquisition and the recent edicts, 
said they were likely to cause rebellion, and asked, in the interest of the peti- 
tioners and of the general public, that proceedings should be suspended till the 
king could be heard from. Alas, the king was never heard from to any useful 
end, but always in the interest of bigotry, bloodshed, confusion, and ruin. 

THE " BEGGARS." 

The duchess, who for some time had been burdened beyond her strength, 
was much oppressed by this demonstration. Orange tried to reassure her by 
saying that the visitors were loyal and honorable gentlemen. Egmont remarked 
with a shrug that he had a bad leg, and must go off to the baths at Aix. Other 
members of the council, stiff king's men and poor patriots, were more violent in 
their expressions. Berlaymont wished to use a cudgel on the petitioners. "Why, 
madam," said he, "are you afraid of those beggars? " The word passed from 
mouth to mouth, and was accepted by those to whom it was applied in scorn. On 
April 8th, the three hundred confederates sat down to a banquet in Count Culern- 
burg's house. During the festivities Brederode produced a mendicant's wallet 
and wooden bowl : they were passed from hand to hand with the toast, "Long 
live the Beggars ! " Orange, with Horn and Egmont, came in for a moment, 
and managed to stop this foolery and send the revellers home. But trivial inci- 
dents often lead to large results. A chance gibe, taken up in half defiant, half 
unmeaning jest by a party of reckless roysterers, spread among all classes and 
became the watchword of revolt. The young squires, to carry the joke further, 
adopted a plain costume of gray, and went about with pouch, bowl, and medals 
bearing Philip's head and a motto, " Faithful to the king, even to wearing the 
beggar's sack." This inscription shows their lack of serious purpose, for fidelity 
to the king meant support of the Inquisition, against which they were professedly 
banded. Brederode received an ovation in Antwerp, announced to the crowd 
which gathered under his window that he would defend their liberties to the death, 
and exhibited his bowl and wallet amid great applause. These emblems, however 
childish, helped to fire the popular imagination. The hot youths who talked so 
much, as Orauge knew well, were little likely to hurt tyranny or help freedom; 
but the name they had adopted took its place in history, and became the pass- 
word of many a conspiracy, the rallying-cry of many a battle. 




% 

K 

a 
o 

m 
< 

w 

» 
z 

o 

(/J 

c 

z 

u 

w 

X 
P, 

d 



480 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 4 8r 

FIELD- PREACHING. 

All these proceedings were dutifully reported to Madrid, and diligently 
noted by the king as so many treasons. Fifty-three articles, drawn up by Vig- 
lius, proposed to substitute strangling or beheading for the burning of heretics : 
they were called " the Moderation " by the government, and the " Murderation" 
by the people. Berghem and Montigny, nobles of high rank and character, were 
sent to Madrid on a mission like that of Egmont. Heedless of warnings received 
on the way, they went on to meet their fate. Secret orders had already come from 
Philip to increase the fury of the persecution ; but during a lull in the storm, the 
Protestants had become bolder than ever before. Field-preachings were attended 
by crowds. Former monks, Huguenots of good family, learned scholars, and 
plain dyers and weavers, proclaimed the gospel as they understood it. Marat's 
psalms in a Dutch version were peddled about, and rolled forth as lustily as by 
the Calvinists of France. On Sunday, July 7th, twenty thousand persons gath- 
ered at the bridge of Ernonville, near Tournay, to listen to Ambrose Wille. 
He came from Geneva, and a price was on his head ; but a hundred armed horse- 
men acted as his guard, and every third man in the multitude had a gun, a sword, 
a club, a pike, a pistol, a pitchfork, or a knife. At one of these meetings a Catho- 
lic theologian interrupted and easily confounded the ignorant preacher: he was- 
with difficulty rescued from the angry audience, and put in jail to secure his 
safety. The regent forbade the assemblages, but could not enforce her prohibi- 
tion; the foreign troops had gone, and the militia were at the services or in sym- 
pathy with the worshippers. 

In Flanders and Brabant, five-sixths of the people were thought to have 
embraced the new doctrines. Some were Lutherans, some Anabaptists, far 
more were Calvinists. They looked to the nobles as their natural protectors ' r 
most of these were still Catholics, though some were beginning to turn. A few, 
as Berlaymont and Aremberg, were thick-and-thin supporters of despotism. 
Egmont and Horn were in a dilemma, willing neither to oppress their country- 
men nor to oppose the king. Orange, who had married Anna of Saxony in 1561,, 
at this time disliked the doctrines of Calvin and inclined to those of Luther ; he- 
was counselling moderation and trying to preserve the peace. It was a hopeless- 
task, but his temper was prudent and conservative : he understood, as the hot- 
heads about him did not, the fearful difficulties of the task that lay ahead. He 
doubtless shared the view expressed by his gallant younger brother, Louis of 
Nassau : "There will soon be a hard nut to crack. The king will never grant 
the preaching : the people will never give it up, if it cost them their necks. 
There is a hard puff coming upon the country before long." Few wished to be 
rebels, to precipitate a civil war ; but what could be done with a pigheaded mon- 
arch who would not hear reason nor open his eyes to the facts, who regarded 
every effort to enlighten him as treason, who could not be persuaded that, when 



482 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

subjects are no longer willing to be slaves, the consent of the governed is an 
element that must enter into the plans of those who attempt the art of governing? 

IMAGE-BREAKING. 

The explosion came from the lowest orders, in a way unjustifiable and most 
unfortunate. In our day the claims of art and property are respected. If we do 
not like crucifixes, images, painted windows, we can keep away from them ; they 
are the affair of those who care for them, not ours. But the main trouble of 
former ages was this, that everyone thought himself the keeper of his neighbor's 
conscience ; what he considered wrong must not be allowed to exist. Every 
movement of religious reform has been attended by violences which the civilized 
world has deplored ever since, because they destroyed so much that we should 
value now. It was so in parts of France, when the Huguenots were strong 
enough; it was so when the Puritans had power in England, eighty years later. 
Yet this must be said in excuse for the iconoclasts, that things harmless and often 
beautiful in themselves had been made hateful by vile association. They had 
seen their friends tormented for refusing to bow at these very altars ; the cruci- 
fix had been brandished in the face of martyrs at the stake. To the ignorant 
and unreflecting, the statues of apostles and saints were figures of persecutors ; 
the bells that called to worship had the sound of death-dealing edicts ; the spire 
that pointed to heaven was an emblem of tyranny. 

The cathedral of Antwerp, begun in the twelfth century and finished in the 
fourteenth, was the most splendid church of northern Europe. Its architecture, 
statuary, paintings, and innumerable decorations, were famous and hugely 
admired. Lesser structures, when they have been allowed to stand uninjured, 
draw visitors from all parts of the globe, and afford unending instruction and 
delight. On August 21st, 1566, only the bare walls remained. "A mere hand- 
ful of rabble," in the words of Orange, had torn the interior to pieces. He had 
been obliged to leave the city, and the cowardly magistrates, though they were 
warned of what was coming, took no adequate measures of protection. Grown 
bold with impunity, the same mob in the same -night sacked thirty smaller 
churches and all the convents. One hundred fanatics are said to have done all 
the actual work of destruction in Antwerp. Though poor and ragged, they stole 
nothing ; nor did they aim at any human life. 

Similar scenes were enacted at Ghent, Valenciennes, and almost everywhere 
throughout the provinces. At Tournay some rioters, acquainted with the annals 
of the past, dug up the embalmed body of the Duke Adolphus, who had com- 
mitted a famous outrage on his father a hundred years before. In Flanders four 
hundred churches were sacked — and one man, who had pocketed a little of the 
goods spoiled, was hanged by his companions. A few competent leaders, a 
little presence of mind among the magistrates, could have prevented most if not 




4«3 



4§4 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 




all of the destruction. 
At Mechlin barely 
eighty rioters did what 
they chose, without op- 
position. In Antwerp, 
an English knight saw 
a dozen sack several 
churches, with ten thou- 
sand persons looking on, 
too timid or too careless 
to interfere, Only once 
does there seem to have 
been effectual resist- 
ance. A large mob 
raged for days over the 
province of Tour nay, 
and ruined the beauti- 
ful abbey of Marchi- 
ennes. Near Auchin a 
noble with a small body 
of countrymen slew five 
hundred of them and 
drove the rest away. 
The rising was a brief 
midsummer madness, 
but it left behind it sad 
wrecks, and an awful 
account to be settled. 

THE 
OUTRAGES PUNISHED. 

The great mass of 
the Protestants had 
nothing to do with these 
outrages, which the 
better sort of their 
ministers and people 
denounced and de- 
plored. While they 
were going on, Wille 
told avast congregation 



THE TOWN HALL, HAGUE. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 485 

that they disgraced the cause of reform. Not only this ; they weakened and im- 
perilled it. Such excesses were sure to strengthen its enemies, to embarrass its 
staunchest friends, and to drive away the doubting and half-hearted. It is always 
easy to hold a principle responsible for its abuses, however it may disavow them. 
Many nobles of the confederacy, disgusted and alarmed by this noisy chorus to 
their Beggars' song, made haste to throw aside the bowl and wallet, and to vindi- 
cate their loyalty by turning against their late allies. The tools of despotism, of 
course, were satisfied that heretics and rebels were all of a piece, and that it was not 
worth while to make distinctions among them. Philip gnashed his teeth with rage 
when he heard the news, swore by his father's soul, and cried that it should cost 
them dear. The regent was so alarmed that she wished to escape from Brussels 
at once ; Orange, Egmont, and Horn had much ado to allay her fears and dis- 
suade her from a disgraceful and disastrous flight. In her panic she agreed to 
abolish the Inquisition and proclaim a partial liberty of worship, and an Accord 
to this effect was signed on August 24th. The provinces thus secured a delusive 
breathing-space before the storm burst upon them in full fury. 

The great lords now went to their several governments, to reduce them to 
order. Egmont, now bent on making progress backwards, terrified Flanders by 
his violence, forbade all Protestant meetings, and ordered many executions for 
religion as well as for rioting. His secretary Bakkerzeel, according to an admir- 
ing historian, gave the duchess much consolation by his exploits ; " on one occa- 
sion he hanged twenty Protestants, including a minister, at a single heat." 
Orange with much labor pacified Antwerp, and established that toleration of 
which he, almost alone among the men of his age, had conceived the full idea. 

Horn was much less successful in Tournay, which was vehemently Calvinist. 
The people pulled him one way and the regent another, till he said he would 
rather be besieged by the Turks. In October he was recalled, and on January 
2d, 1567, the city was entered and disarmed by Noircarmes, an officer of evil note 
hereafter, at the head of troops who were much disappointed at not being 
allowed to sack it. When the magistrates opened their gates, he told them that 
if they had delayed another minute he would have burned the town and killed 
everybody in it. This was a pleasant foretaste of what they and their neighbors 
were likely to get a little later. 

THE REGENT'S SLANDERS. 

Meantime the Duchess Margaret was practising the kind of diplomacy most 
likely to be acceptable to her brother and master. Machiavel's "Prince" was 
the text-book for princes in those days, and Philip, the most eminent pro- 
ficient in this kind of learning, had infected every one about him with his Judas 
policy — smooth speeches, kisses, and flatteries, while plotting the victim's ruin. 
So the regent kept up appearances with her councillors, and wrote a long series 



486 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

of slanders to the king. These men, she asserted, were enemies of religion. 
Horn wished to give heresy full swing, or else kill all the priests. Egmont was 
raising troops in Germany. Orange meant to be lord of Brabant. The country 
was to be divided between them and their foreign allies : all the Catholics were 
to be massacred. It is not certain how much either she or Philip believed of 
this stuff: when people live in an atmosphere of falsehood, they lose the power 
to distinguish between truth and lies. Horn and Egmont were devout Rom- 
anists in their way ; a little too patriotic to suit Spain, and much too loyal to 
their worst enemy to meet the approval of posterity. There was no plot between 
them : Orange became a rebel only when he was driven to it — we should think 
no worse of him if he had started on that path a little earlier. But the tyrant 
preferred to take the darkest view of any who were not his abject slaves; and 
those who served him with heart and soul and mind and strength, as we shall 
see, were not much safer from his jealous suspicions. 

ORANGE ALONE. 

By the end of this year the prince had received information of Philip's dark 
designs, which were soon to be known to all the world. At Dendermonde he 
held a brief conference with his colleagues ; but Egmont blindly insisted on 
trusting to the king's good faith, and Horn, weary and disgusted, was deter- 
mined to retire from public affairs. The confederacy was dissolved, having 
done more harm than good. Its members, according to a contemporary writer, 
had "ruined their country by their folly and incapacity;" in the opinion of 
Motley, "they had profaned a holy cause by indecent orgies, compromised it by 
seditious demonstrations, abandoned it when most in need of assistance." Louis 
of Nassau and a few others were sound at heart, but young and wilful, ready to 
throw discretion to the winds, and longing for "the bear-dance to begin." 
Orange, who counted the cost, was practically alone. He had won his famous 
title of "the Silent" by his ability to keep his own counsel under a terrible test. 
When in France after the war, early in 1559, Henry II., stupidly supposing him 
to be of the same stuff as Philip and Alva, had revealed to him a plan for mur- 
dering the Huguenots : the horrid news was at once taken to heart and never 
forgotten, but not a word, not a sign, not even a change of countenance, showed 
the French king that he had mistaken his man. Familiar from childhood with 
court and state business, deeply versed in affairs and men, he had learned to hold 
himself in check, to look through appearances and pretences at the inner fact, 
and to stand on guard. The only blemish on his character is his lack of straight- 
forwardness in dealing with the king; but he knew that it is necessary to fight 
the devil with fire, to employ spies and stratagems against a knave. If he 
descended to the arts of his age to serve his country, it was not that he loved 
deceit, but because without deceit successful statesmanship was impossible. 




WILUAM THE SILENT, PRINCE OF ORANGE. 



487 



488 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Had lie been as guileless, as confiding, as his friends, there might have been no 
Dutch Republic. 

His silence, as we have already seen, was broken whenever he saw the need 
of speech. At this time he put forth a pamphlet modestly urging the political 
necessity of some degree of religious toleration. He had felt and seen the truth 
which is well expressed by a modern writer, that "the heart turns to flint when 
the blessing of religion is changed into the curse of sect." Between the unbend- 
ing fierceness of two clashing opinions, the provinces were in a fair way to be 
destroyed. Even the regent had lately urged the king to permit a meeting of 
the States-General, saying that "it was better to preserve the Catholic religion 
for a part of the country than to lose it altogether." But no argument could 
move the bigot who was bound to rule or ruin. Either of these ends seemed to 
be equally acceptable to him : he would hear of no middle course. 

WATRELOTS AND OSTRA.WELL. 

Most of the cities which had been guilty of image-breaking had now 
been attended to : but Valenciennes, which was intensely Protestant, refused to 
receive a garrison. It was on the French border, and took its name from the 
Emperor Valentinian, who founded it in the fourth century. At the end of 1566 
it was outlawed, and Noircarmes began to besiege it. The citizens at first made 
light of this danger, and looked to their friends outside for aid. Near three thou- 
sand rebels gathered at Lannoy, and twelve hundred at Watrelots ; but these 
were attacked and exterminated on one of the first days of 1567. The locksmith 
and preacher who headed the larger force was left to fight alone after the first 
fire, and his men were cut down as they ran or driven into the river to drown. 
Those at Watrelots, or half of them, made more resistance, but all were shot in 
the cemetery or burned in the belfry of the church. These were the first open 
fights for liberty in the provinces, and the result was alarm and discouragement. 
It was made apparent that undisciplined workmen and peasants could not stand 
against regular troops. 

The same fate soon befell another rising. Brederode, the founder and chief 
of the Beggars, was making himself conspicuous rather than useful. His town 
of Viane was a source of Protestant publications and, as his enemies asserted, a 
centre of disorder. In February he sent to the regent a new request, demand- 
ing far more than the former one. Margaret, who had taken his measure, told 
him to go home and behave himself, or beware of the consequences. Undaunted, 
he rode about the country, boasting what he would do. An agent of his, till 
stopped by Orange, was enlisting men in Antwerp for an attempt on the Isle of 
Walcheren. A better man than Brederode was drawn into the rash scheme. 
St. Aldegonde's brother, Marnix of Tholouse, was a Protestant and a youth of 
promise. He left his studies to lay dowu his life for freedom, and put himself 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



489 



at the head of a rabble of three thousand, entrenched at Ostrawell. De Beau- 
voir, commander of the regent's body-guard, came forth against him with eight 
hundred picked soldiers, thirsting for blood and plunder. On March 13th, they 
attacked the fort, and annihilated its feeble defenders. 



TUMULT AT ANTWERP. 

The whole affair could be seen from the walls and roofs of Antwerp. Mar- 
nix's young wife demanded aid or vengeance. Ten thousand armed citizens 
rushed to the Red Gate. Orange met them there. He was insulted and threat- 
ened ; a gun was aimed at him, but some one thrust it aside. His coolness calmed 




W/ 

ORIENTAL BISHOPS. 

the tumult, for the moment at least. He told them that it was too late to save 
their friends : the attempt would merely expose themselves and the city to- a ter- 
rible retribution. Most of them listened ; five hundred foolishly went forth, to 
cause the death, not of their enemies, but of the last fugitives from Ostrawell. 
De Beauvoir called his men from the pursuit. They had taken three hundred 
prisoners : these they now shot, and turned against the men of Antwerp, who 
hastily fled back within their gates. 

This was not the end of the trouble. Fifteen thousand Calvinists barri- 
caded the Mere, opened the jail, and scorned the authorities. There was terrible 
fear in the city that day and night; it would probably have been sacked, but for 
the prince's masterful measures. The fires of sectarian bigotry raged fiercely: 
the three factions, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Catholic, all hated one another. The 
two latter included most of Antwerp's wealth and aristocracy. By arming them, 




49° 



THE RED GATE, ANTWERP. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 491 

Orange averted a combat for which all were ready. On the fifteenth, near forty 
thousand men were encamped in three different parts of the city. On the next 
day the danger was over. William, with his friend and colleague Hoogstraten, 
then associated with him in the government of the city, had r.'dden to the Mere 
and induced the mutineers to hear reason. 

While these deeds of arms were doing, the political situation was changing. 
The regent had recovered from the alarm of the previous August and disowned 
the Accord ; with the subsequent success of her officers, she grew bolder, more 
tricky, and more tyrannical. Orange had spent part of the winter in his govern- 
ment of Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht, where he was almost as much needed as 
at Antwerp. The duchess wished him to restrict the Protestant preaching to the 
open country : he wrote her that the open country was under water. She agreed 
to allow it on the wharves, and then presently took back her word. This playing 
fast and loose disgusted William. His patience was a strong camel, but its back 
would hold no more such burdens. 

THE NEW OATH. 

The straw which broke it was a weighty one. Every officer of the king 
was now required to swear to obey all orders, whatever they might be, without 
limit. The reactionary lords, Mansfeld, Aerschet, Berlaymont, Meghem, and 
others, took the new oath readily. Poor Egmont, who was no longer to be 
counted in any sense a friend of freedom, followed their example. Orange 
refused at once, and resigned all the posts which he held under the king's com- 
mission. Margaret would not accept his resignation. She had her secret orders 
from Philip, to use him and the others, and work them for all they were worth, till 
the king was ready to be done with them. Thus matters stood : the prince no 
longer considered himself a royal officer, though the regent still pretended to 
regard him as such, and laid much work upon him. 

It will be remembered that Philip, though an absolute monarch in Spain, 
had no such right or title in the provinces. Here he was merely Duke of Bra- 
bant, Count of Holland, and so on. Legally, his powers were restricted by many 
old laws and local charters, which he was always overriding, though he had sworn 
to observe them. However the tyrant might disregard these documents, the patri- 
ots kept them in mind, and their efforts for liberty were on this historical basis. 
Nobody desired to resist the king's rightful claims ; but his claims never kept 
within rightful limits. All laws, natural orwiitten, human or divine, were swept 
aside by his insatiate conceit. As for the Prince of Orange, he had honors and 
dignities enough, apart from those held by royal commission ; these he retained 
— except as they might be taken from him by force — after he ceased to be a 
king's officer. Among them was that of Margrave of Antwerp, and in this 
capacity he was still acting. The case, it must be owned, presented elements of 



492 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



confusion, for the old order of things was breaking up, and the new order had 
not yet begun to be established. 

PUNISHMENT OF VALENCIENNES. 

Meantime the siege of Valenciennes was being pressed, and the surrounding 
country endured all the horrors of war, in an age when war had not begun to 
admit the restraints of civilization. The army had unlimited license, and its 
deeds were those of fiends. "Men and women who attempted any communica- 
tion with the city were murdered in cold blood by hundreds. The villages were 
plundered of their miserable possessions ; children were stripped naked in the 
midst of winter for the sake of the rags which covered them. Matrons and vir- 
gins were sold at public auction by the tap of drum. Sick and wounded wretches 
were burned over slow fires, to afford amusement to the soldiers." For a while 
the citizens made a brave defense, but under the first cannonade their courage 
gave way, and they surrendered on March 24th, 1567. Egmont, with the excess- 
ive zeal of a 
recent con- 
verted taken 
part in the 
attack, and 
wished to burn 
the town and 
kill every one 
in it. With- 
out carrying 
out this ex- 
treme sugges- 
tion, blood 
enough was 
shed to satisfy 




-*Vj\T5?gS 



any reasonable 
almost at will. 



AFTER THE FALL OF VALENCIENNES. 

appetite. The soldiers were allowed to rob, ravish, and murder, 
The chief citizens were arrested. Two eminent ministers, De 
Bray and De la Grange, escaped, but were caught and brought back. A countess, 
out of curiosity, visited them in their prison ; they told her that their chains were 
honorable, their sleep sweet, their minds at peace. Amid the tears of their par- 
ishioners they met their fate manfully, and spoke farewell counsels till the 
hangman swung them off. Many others died on the scaffold or at the stake. 
A Catholic resident of the town testified that " for two whole years there was 
scarcely a week in which several were not executed, and often a great number 
were dispatched together." 

This was a golden time for those who were doing their master's work most 
bloodily. Noircarmes grew rich on the spoils of rebels and heretics, and Beau voir 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



493 



claimed, as a reward for his easy success at Ostrawell, the estates of the slain 
Marnix and his surviving brother. Many longing eyes were fixed on the belong- 
ings of Orange and others of doubtful loyalty. Protestant bones would afford 
fine picking, for confiscation always followed death. Was it not written that the 
saints should inherit the earth? The saints might be brawlers, swearers, drunk- 




CASTtE OF ST. ANGELO, ROME. 

ards, liars, libertines, as well as murderers : no matter, if they were of Philip's 
creed. 

WORSE DAYS COMING. 

The spirit of rebellion was now broken. Noircarmes wrote to Cardinal 
Granvelle : " The capture of Valenciennes has worked a miracle. All the other 



494 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

cities come forth to meet me, putting the rope round their own necks." Even 
the fifteen thousand zealots of Antwerp, lately so anxious to fight their fellow- 
citizens, made no attempt to resist when Mansfeld entered their gates with a gar- 
rison on April 26th. The provinces had suffered much; they were to be tried 
still more heavily before they could find the will and the ability to make a real 
stand against oppression. Darker days than they had yet known were at hand ; 
for Alva had left Madrid, and was coming with a Spanish army. 

This news much offended the regent. With unusual boldness, she com- 
plained to her brother that she had been ill treated. The country was doing 
very well under her, she said ; and from he.r point of view it was true. She sent 
an envoy to explain that there was no need of Alva and his troops. The demi- 
god's reply expressed his amazement and high displeasure at her impertinence. 
If she had done any good to religion, she owed him humble thanks for having 
put her in a position to do it. What more did she want ? He was soon coming 
in person, he added ; but he did not mean it. 

Orange could do no more, except to secure his own safety. Margaret, dis- 
regarding his repeated renouncement of her service, deluged him with sum- 
monses, commissions, entreaties ; with his high lineage and his noble heart, she 
wrote, how could he forget his duty ? He replied that he had not taken the new 
oath, and would not take it. She sent the secretary of her council, a man of 
tape and formulas, to argue the matter with him. Here the Silent found his 
tongue, as always when it was needed. "Do you expect me," he asked in sub- 
stance, "to break pledges taken long ago to our laws and to the late emperor? 
To enforce edicts which I loathe ? To persecute my neighbors for their opinions, 
and perhaps bring my wife to the block as a Lutheran ? Am I to be the blind 
slave of whomsoever the king sends here, though he be my inferior in birth and 
station? Is William of Orange to take orders from the Duke of Alva?" 

DEPARTURE OF ORANGE AND MANY OTHERS. 

At the baffled secretary's request, he agreed to meet two or three of the lead- 
ing royalists. It was his last interview with Egmont; whose recent conduct had 
not destroyed a friendship of long standing. He warned the deluded man of the 
perils he was confronting. "You are the bridge," he said, "which the invaders 
will cross and then destroy." The words put into Egmont's mouth, "Adieu, 
landless Prince ! " and William's more apt reply, "Farewell, headless Count!" 
belong to the class of prophesies after the fact. The large estates of Orange 
were soon to dwindle, and Egmont's head, which was serving him very poorly, 
did within fourteen months part company with his body : but the two friends 
would scarcely twit each other with these losses in advance. One remained ; 
the other was in Germany by the end of April. His head had served him well, 
as was soon proved by a letter from Philip's secretary, who was in William's pay — 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



495 



such were the intricacies of high employment. Among the king's secret instruc- 
tions to Alva was this pregnant passage : "Arrest the prince as soon as possible, 
and let his trial last no more than twenty-four hours." 

Orange was not the only fugitive. His brother Louis was already in Ger- 
many, where neither of them was likely to waste his time. Brederode, whose 
activity was chiefly displayed in loud talking and hard drinking, had made a 
disgraceful submission and then fled : he died the next year, little regretted. 
Some minor lords of the late 
confederacy slept while their 
treacherous pilot ran into a 
Frisian port : their men were 
hanged, and themselves kept 
for Alva and his headsman. 
The humbler classes, when they 
could, followed the example of 
their leaders. A few years 
earlier, thirty thousand workers 
in cloth, silks, and dyes had 
carried their useful arts to 
England, and Elizabeth, in giv- 
ing them homes and protection, 
had prudently required each 
house to take a native appren- 
tice. The number of such 
refugees was now multiplied, 
and many were killed in trying 
to escape. The Protestant ser- 
vices were utterly suppressed, 
the chapels torn down, the 
preachers and hearers hanged 
on timbers taken from their 
places of worship. Every village, 
says Meteren, the historian of entrance to the hau, of the knights. 

Antwerp, had its executions, sometimes two or three hundred. The dissenting 
societies were not only scattered, but weeded well : weak or false members, and 
some who had displayed great zeal, were now equally devout at mass. 

The Duchess sent forth on May 24th a new edict, the object of which 
seemed to be to hang nearly everybody. But the king was much incensed, and 
ordered her to recall it as illegal, indecent, and unchristian. Why ? Because 
it provided only for hangings : nothing less than fire on earth and in hell would 
do for heretics. Alva would have no such wicked lenity. 




CHAPTER XXXII. 



ALVA AND THE BLOOD-COUNCIL. 




HERE are names that, when they stood for living" 
power, were greeted with a shudder or a smothered 
ft curse, and that live in history as the synonym of 
all that is most hateful. The man who, more than 
any other, shares his master's infamy was of high 
birth and marked ability. His ancestor was the 
brother of a Byzantine emperor and the conqueror 
of Toledo. Alva himself, though despicable as a 
statesman, was the most famous general of his day. He 
was fifty-nine, tall and lean, haughty and unapproachable, 
cruel and avaricious. He cared little for pleasure, much 
for gain ; as to the rest of his character, " the world has 
agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of 
patient vindictivness and universal bloodthirstiness, was 
never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a 
human bosom." Such was he who for six years was to hold the 
Netherlands in the hollow of his hand, and take delight in crushing 
them. As the regent had written to her brother, he was already 
well known and hated there: as he told his attendants, it mattered little whether 
he was welcome or not — the point was that he was on hand. 

With him came twelve hundred cavalry, and four huge regiments of foot 
from the Italian wars ; in all, about ten thousand veterans. Each man was 
armed and dressed like an officer, and had his private servant — for the profession 
of arms was then the most respected in Europe, and Philip's armies were the 
finest in the world. Two thousand women of the camp accompanied the march. 
All were under perfect discipline, splendidly equipped and provided, and masters 
of their business. These gentry were to play a great figure in the provinces for 
many years to come. The French king, for fear of the Huguenots, would not 
let them pass through his territories : on either side a French and a Swiss force 
followed and watched them closely, to see that they did no harm on the road. 
They went by way of Savoy, Burgundy, and Lorraine, often in lonesome and 
dangerous places where they might have been ambushed and annihilated by 
less than their own numbers. It seems a pity that this could not be done ; but 
(496) 




Copyrighted 1893. 



Gear" Lasher. Litho.Fhiia. 



THE VIRGIN MARTYR. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



497 



rebellion as yet existed only in the tyrant's jealous fancy. The provinces were 
cowed, shivering under the lash, and waiting in helpless terror for their lordly 
executioners. 

EGMONT AND HORN ARRESTED. 

In August Count Egmont, still smitten with judicial blindness, rode forth 
to meet the old enemy who brought his death-warrant. "Here comes the chief 
heretic," said Alva. Presently he threw his arm over the victim's shoulders, 
and they went on to Brussels like 
loving friends. These lying pre- 
tenses of good will, with assurances 
of the royal favor, were kept up for 
some time, and extended to Horn, 
who was thus lured from his estate 
at Weert, where he had been sulking 
in retirement. Eg- 
mont at least received 
repeated warnings. 
On September 9th, 
when they were din- 
ing with Alva's son, 
the grand prior of 
the Knights of St. 
John, the host whis- 
pered in his ear, 
"Leave this place at 
once ; take your fast- 
est horse and escape.' ' 
He rose in agitation, 
left the room and 
would have followed 
this honest advice ; 
but Noircarmes, fit 
tool of all villainy, 
dissuaded him. He 
and Horn were ar- 
rested the same day, 
and a fortnight later placed in the castle at Ghent. Their secretaries and the 
burgomaster of Antwerp were also seized : Hoogstraten escaped through a 
lucky accident. Titelmann, the inquisitor, hearing of these captures, asked 
whether "Wise William" was among them, and exclaimed, "Then our joy will 
be brief; woe to us for the wrath to come from Germany ! " 




DUKE OF ALVA. 



498 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Bergen and Montigny, who had undertaken a mission to Spain the year 
before, were detained there. Bergen died heartbroken and perhaps poisoned ; his 
estate was confiscated, and the other's fate was deferred. 

Alva's next step was to establish a Council of Troubles, better known as the 
Council of Blood. Nominally it was to have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases 
connected with the image-breaking, the risings, and other recent disturbances : 
in reality, it set aside at one blow the courts, the laws, the charters of the prov- 
inces, and put in their place an irresponsible system of Spanish or Italian 
despotism. The duke became a czar or sultan ; with the aid of a few henchmen 
he governed the country as he chose, with the almost avowed object of diminish- 
ing its population and turning its revenues, public and private, into the treasury. 
He had promised Philip a yearly income of half a million ducats from confisca- 
tions, and he boasted that a river of gold, a yard deep, should soon flow toward 
Spain. This involved the removal of those who had the gold ; and apart from 
what was to be gained, there was much pleasure in mere bloodletting, for sur- 
geons of his quality. Religion afforded a fair pretense to all this slitting of 
throats and purses ; but any rich man was likely to be found a heretic. In fact, 
the eighteen articles of the new court brought nearly every exercise of intel- 
ligence within the range of capital offenses. It was high treason to have signed 
or transmitted any petition against the edicts, the Inquisition, or the bishops; 
to claim that the old laws and charters were entitled to respect, or to question 
the king's right to trample them under foot; to have had any connection with 
the preachings, or not to have resisted them and the ' Request ' too, as well as 
the spoliation of the churches. Under this savage decree, almost the whole 
population of the Netherlands could be held guilty of treason ; and this seemed 
to be the object aimed at. Never did tyranny use plainer language, or go to 
work with more wholesale and methodical ferocity. 

THE "COUNCIL OF TROUBLES." 

The new council was very loose in its texture and informal in its proceed- 
ings ; ease and efficiency were desired, and these could only be impeded by set 
forms. Both the privy council and the state council were practically merged in 
it ; yet it had no charter, its chief members were mere creatures and appointees 
of Alva, and most of them had no votes. The duke kept it thus in his own 
hands for an obvious reason ; as he significantly expressed it to his master, " the 
men of law condemn only for crimes that are proved, whereas our state affairs 
are managed by different rules from the laws they have here." His chief tools 
were old Viglius, Noircarmes, Berlaymont, and two Spaniards, Vargas and Del 
Rio. One of his favorites was Hessels, a native councillor of some note. Like 
the prelates at Abelard's trial, this worthy used to sleep through the discussions, 
and wake up when a case was finished, to say, " Ad patibuhtm — to the gallows." 




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499 



500 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The usual method of procedure (if it deserved the name) was this : informa- 
tions came in by the bushel, and Avere sent by Alva to the inferior councillors. 
They gave them some sort of examination, and made reports to Vargas on each 
paper, which might accuse a single person or any number. When the report 
recommended death, it was approved by Vargas, and the victims executed within 
two days. In any other case it was sent back to be revised, and the duke scolded 
his subordinates for their lack of zeal. The cases of Orange, Egmont, Horn, 
Montigny, and other nobles of eminence, whether within reach or not, demanded 
and received more time and attention. 

By this atrocious travesty of justice eighteen hundred lives were taken in 
less than three months. We read of forty-six executed together at Malines, and 
eighty-four at Valenciennes. Some were hanged, some burned, some beheaded.. 
It was intended to make a general clearance just before Lent of 1568; many 
had warning and escaped for the moment, but five hundred victims rewarded. 
the zeal of the blood-hunters. No care was taken to discriminate between sup- 
posed guilt and the absence of it. One De Wit of Amsterdam was condemned 
for having prevented a rioter from firing at a magistrate; if he could do that, 
it was sagely concluded, he must have been a leader of the revolt. When 
another's case came up, it was found that he had done nothing amiss, but had 
been put to death already. "No matter," said Vargas; "if he was innocent, so 
much the better for him at his trial in the other world." 

ALVA VICEROY. 

Since Alva's arrival the regent's occupation had been gone, and she fumed 
at the loss of her power and dignity. Again and again she had offered her res- 
ignation ; at last it was accepted, and the duke named as governor in her stead. 
She left the provinces at the end of the year 1567, regretted only because she 
had given place to one much worse than she. In the light of later events her 
rule, which was bad enough, seemed lenient. Her last official act was a useless 
letter to her brother, urging mercy and forgiveness ; but she said and did nothing 
to save her faithful friends and servants, Egmont and Horn, from the fate to 
which she had lured them on. ' She was not alone in finding it easier to preach 
than practice, easiest of all to condemn perfidy and cruelty which, though in 
greater degree, were like her own. 

Alva had at once taken the keys of the chief cities, and distributed his ter- 
rible soldiery among them. His next care, after the Blood-Council, which usually 
cost him seven hours a day, was to provide means whereby his garrisons might 
securely hold and overawe the towns. The citadel of Antwerp, which was des- 
tined to play such a terrible part in the history of the next few years, was begun 
in October 1567, and hurried to completion, two thousand workmen laboring 
under the direction of two skilled Italian engineers. The cost, four hundred. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



501 



thousand florins, was placed upon the burghers, who were thus obliged to pay 
for the suppression of their liberty. Alva meant to have no more such civilian 
tumults as Orange had put down; hereafter the soldiers would furnish the dis- 
orders. 

ORANGE INDICTED. 

In January, 1568, Orange, with his brother and other noble refugees, was 
summoned to appear before the Blood-Council within six weeks, on penalty of 
banishment and confiscation. He replied briefly, disowning the jurisdiction of 
that tribunal. He was sovereign of the principality ia France which gave him 




REAR FACADE OP THE FLESHER'S HALL, HARLEM. 



Tiis name, a member of the Germanic or Holy Roman Empire, and a Knight of 
the Golden Fleece. He could be tried only by his peers. He was ready to 
appear before the knights, under the statutes of the order, or before the 
emperor, the Electors, and their fellows. In either case, he would be in the 
•charge of his brethren and friends, not in prison like Egmont and Horn. 



502 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

If the prince be blamed for lack of definite speech or prompt action at this; 
time, it mnst be remembered that he was a statesman and not a visionary. It 
was useless to rise before the time. He had had abundant evidence that his- 
countrymen were not yet prepared, either morally or physically, to fight for their 
liberties. It was no mere selfish thought which prompted him to announce, on 
leaving the Netherlands nine months before, that he had yet an income of sixty- 
thousand florins, and would not attack Philip so long as the king left his honor 
and estates untouched, In the coming conflict of right against might, he must: 
have the sympathy of all fair-minded men ; before he drew his sword, he must 
have manifest and unanswerable reasons. It was not only best, it was necessary,, 
that the enemy should put himself utterly and wildly in the wrong. The only 
course open was to give the devil rope enough to hang himself with. 

ABDUCTION OF WILLIAM'S SON. 

At this time the one serious mistake of William's life resulted in an irre- 
parable loss. In removing his family to Germany, he had strangely left his 
eldest son, Count de Buren, at the college of Louvain. They were never to meet 
again, and the boy was to grow up under alien influences in a distant land. It 
was an abduction with the consent of the kidnapped. The child of thirteen, 
whose mother was an Egmont, seems not to have had the intelligence and knowl- 
edge that might be expected from his years and parentage ; for he was pleased. 
at being invited to Spain in the king's name, and even wrote to thank Alva for 
his kindness. Being of this temper, his body received no injury, but his soul 
dwindled under the tutelage of his father's foes. When he returned to his native 
land, a man of thirty-three, it was as a gloomy bigot, in the company of the 
invaders. He was the only member of the noble house of Nassau who was not 
a patriot and a lover of liberty. 

The faculty of Louvain, much shocked by this outrage, sent deputies to 
complain of the violation of their privileges. Vargas, as acting-president of 
the Blood-Council, told them plainly, "We do not care for your privi.eges." They 
were lucky to get off with their lives ; under the new statutes, they might have 
been hung for treason. The magistrates of Antwerp sent some of their number 
to beg the lives of several eminent citizens, who were in prison. They trembled 
as Alva let loose the fury of his tongue upon them. He called their city a nest 
of traitors and heretics, their mission a gross presumption. Let them beware, 
or he would hang all Antwerp, to teach other towns their duty : the king would 
rather make the whole land a wilderness, than let a single Protestant stay alive 
in it. On this occasion, if on few others, the duke undoubtedly told the truth. 

MURDEROUS DECREE OF THE INQUISITION. 

As if to prove that Philip and Alva were not the only murderous bigots,, 
and that one section of Christendom had learned nothing of Christianity in the 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



503 



last three hundred years, a brief decree of the Inquisition, dated February 16th, 
1568, condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. Of 
the three millions, several hundred thousand, at least, were Catholics, but what 
of that? The spirit of the legate at Bezieres still prevailed — "Kill them all! " 
It was in a way to be done, for Philip had able implements at work ; but the 
church, through its approved and most powerful organ, wished to claim part of 
the credit, and to make it plain that no mere worldly and political motives gov- 
erned the Catholic King. The gospel had been in the world for fifteen centuries, 
and yet in its professed chief seat and centre this was its interpretation. This was 
the will of God, forsooth, this was for the glory of Christ, that those whom God 
created and Christ died to save, men and women of all ranks and ages, harmless 
children, babies at the breast, should be harried and tormented, hunted like 
Avild beasts, flung in the fire like weeds, swept from the earth by myriads and 
nations ! 

For the credit of human nature one would be glad to believe the decree a 



forgery, the tale a fiction. No more 
awful crime was ever perpetrated 
against humanity, no more blas- 
phemous insult ever flung in the 
face of the Most High. 
There is force in the 
old argument, that it is 
almost a proof of the 
divine mission of the 
Saviour that His reli- 
gion has survived such 
deeds committed in His 
name. The infidel his- 
torian was right in as- 
serting that while the 
Pagans slew thousands 
on the altars of their 
false gods, the Chris- 
tians have murdered 
each other by the hun- 
dred thousand. The 
persecutions of Decius 
and Diocletian, horrible 
as they were, shrink 
almost into insignifi- 
cance beside the perse- 
cution s of Philip of 



^ 




COSTUMES OF HOLLAND WOMEN. 



5 o 4 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Spain. It may be claimed in excuse for the heathens that they knew no better : 
what shall be said of those who, having received the law of divine enlighten- 
ment, so misused it that they were more ignorant, more brutal, more malignant, 
than the heathens? 

It cannot be asserted that this hideous sentence of the Inquisition had any 
marked effect on Alva's doings. He needed no stimulus : the unholy fire which 
burned in his breast was one with the spirit of Spain and Rome. The executions 
went on merrily. The duke wrote to his master, estimating the victims whose 
immolation was to improve the Easter festivities " at eight hundred heads." To 
prevent their last speeches at the scaffold or on the way to it, their tongues were 
now forced into iron rings and then burned, so that the swelling kept them in 
place and silenced their owners. 

The provinces were now in a frightful condition. Bands of desperate men 
roamed the country, robbing and marauding. They called themselves the Wild 
Beggars, and made revolt a pretense to cover their crimes. Convents were 
plundered: many priests and monks had their ears and noses cut off. These 
outrages did no good to the cause of liberty, and their authors were soon destroyed 
or dispersed. 

ORANGE BEGINS THE WAR. 

The Prince of Orange was not long in receiving the provocation he waited 
for. His son had been kidnapped and sent to Spain, his Dutch estates were con- 
fiscated, himself was condemned as a contumacious rebel for refusing to appear 
before a lawless court, composed, as he indignantly complained, of " he knew not 
what base knaves, not fit to be his valets." His position was now taken, and 
j ustified before the world in a published apology. The document explained the 
recent course of events, traced the troubles to their source, denounced Cardinal 
Granvelle as the first stirrer-up of trouble, denied having borne part in the 
so-called Compromise and Request, now absurdly treated as acts of treason, and 
threw the gauge of defiance to Philip as an oath-breaker and tyrant. 

In advance of this declaration, William had already taken steps toward war. 
A curious pretense of loyal regard, required by the notions of that age, was still 
maintained toward a king who could not be trusted to manage his own affairs. 
A commission issued on April 6th, 1560, to Louis of Nassau, authorized him to 
raise troops in order "to show our love for the monarch and his hereditary prov- 
inces, to prevent the desolation hanging over the country by the ferocity of the 
Spaniards, to maintain the privileges sworn to by his majesty and his predeces- 
sors, to prevent the extirpation of all religion by the edicts, and to save the sons 
and daughters of the land from abject slavery." Similar commissions were 
given to Hoogstraten and others, but Louis, who had already showed his aptitude 
and love for this business, was the general and his brother's right hand. To 
meet the expenses Orange sold his jewels, plate, and other personal property, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



505 



which were of great value. Large contributions came also from Hoogstraten, 
Culemberg, and other nobles, from the Flemish exiles in England, from the 
Dutch cities, and from the German relatives of the prince. Alliances were made 
with several Protestant rulers, and nothing neglected that could be done at this 
•early stage to secure the sinews of war. 

A private attempt against Alva failed. He was to be attacked publicly 
from three different quarters at the same time, but one of these enterprises was 
■delayed. Villars, with near three thousand men, entered from the east about 
April 20th, and tried to enter Roermonde in Liinburg, but was not successful 
A Spanish force, in numbers inferior to his own, attacked him with fury a few 
■days later, and cut his troops to pieces in two engagements near Dalhem. He 
and the survivors were soon captured. 



BATTLE OF THE HOLY LION. 



Louis of Nassau had already raised the standard of revolt in the north 
In this region, much less densely peopled than the southern provinces, and in 




DUTCH GIRLS IN THEIR WORKING DRESS. 



jDarts a marshy wilderness, he and his young brother Adolphus gathered a 
"motley army of "Beggars," adventurers, and whatever came to hand — some of 
them good fighters, but many raw recruits and poorly armed. With this indif- 
ferent array, held together largely by the hope of pay and booty — the first hard 
to get, the other extremely doubtful — they gained some small successes, 
threatened Groningen, and prepared to meet the terrible Spanish veterans. 



5 o6 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Only able generalship could do anything with such means against such odds ; but 
Louis was the man for the task, and was now to win the first victory for freedom. 

Count Aremberg was stadtholder of Frisia, and one of the firmest native 
supports of tyranny. Though crippled and tormented by the gout, he was sent. 
to his province to put down the insurgents. On May 22d, a skirmish occurred 
at Dam, in the northeast comer of the Netherlands. That night Louis marched 
southwards, and encamped in a strong position near the convent of the Holy 
Lion. It was the very spot where Hermann, or Arminius, had destroyed Varus 
and the Roman legions fifteen hundred years before. Behind was a wood, to the 
left a rising ground, the only one for miles ; in front a region of swampy pastures^ 
intersected by wide ditches. The only safe approach was by a narrow causeway 1 
along this the enemy followed the Beggars. 

Aremberg' s orders were to attack only with his whole force, and his col- 
league, Meghem, was some hours behind. But the soldiers had no mind to share 
their expected plunder, and were impatient of restraint. Six cannon, brought 
from Groningen, were levelled against the hill. The patriot light troops, stationed. 
on this eminence, had orders to retire at the first attack. This ruse succeeded ; 
the Spainards clamored to advance, and their colonel, Braccamonte, taunted Arem- 
berg with cowardice. Forgetting prudence (for he saw the dangers of the ground) ,, 
the general yielded, and the troops dashed forward with fatal impetuosity. A 
volley of musketry broke their ranks, and they were presently struggling in the 
mire on either side. Then the rebel pikemen charged upon them, and a body 
that had been concealed behind the hill took them in the flank and rear. A 
thousand were shot or smothered in the bogs : Braccamonte fled. Aremberg died. 
bravely, after Adolphus of Nassau had fallen by his hand. 

This battle showed that the Beggars were not always of necessity helpless. 
and imbecile before their tyrants. But apart from its moral effect, the victory 
was useless. Louis could not easily keep his troops together, and his attempt 
to besiege Groningen, as we shall see, had no result. On the other hand, Alva's- 
surprise and wrath were great, and he took speedy vengeance on those who were 
within his power. The Culemberg mansion at Brussels, in which Brederode had 
produced the beggar's wallet and cup at the famous banquet, was torn down, and. 
a monument raised on its site, as if it had sheltered a regicide. On June ist,, 
the Batenburgs and other men of rank, eighteen in all, were publicly beheaded. 
Villars and three more suffered the next day. Thus no distinction was made 
between rebels taken in arms, and those who had merely signed petitions or 
drunk toasts the year before. Anything less than uniform and slavish submis- 
sion to the tyrant was dealt with as a capital crime. 

EGMONT AND HORN BEHEADED. 

The cases of Egmont and Horn drew more attention than all the rest, since,, 
after Orange, they were the highest nobles in the land. Like him, both were 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



507- 



Knights of the Golden Fleece, and Horn was a Count of the Empire. Immense 
influence, from the emperor down, was exerted on their behalf; protests and- 
entreaties came in abundantly ; but Philip and Alva were immovable. After a. 




DEA.TH OF EGMONT. 

mock trial by the Blood-Council, with scarcely the faintest pretense of legality 
m the whole proceedings, they were executed in the most public manner, in the 
great square of Brussels, on June 5th, 1568. 



; 5 o8 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The chief emotion called forth in modern minds by this event is amazement 
;at the stupidity of Philip. The victims were objects of universal sympathy at 
the time, but neither is entitled to much respect from us. In themselves they 
were not remarkable men, though Egmont was famous for the success of his 
arms in France. Both lived and died in the old religion ; both were loyal and faith- 
ful servants of their treacherous and cruel master. We have seen how little they 
did for civil or religious liberty ; and Egmont, in the months preceding his arrest, 
did much against it, showing such persecuting zeal as might have satisfied the 
king that this was a fit tool of despotism. Immediately before his end, he abased 
himself in a useless and submissive plea for mercy, " kissing the murderous 
hand which smote him." What could be gained by the destruction of two nobles, 
• one of whom was harmless, and the other, as even a member of the Blood-Coun- 
cil testified, entitled not to punishment but to reward? Merely a terrifying dis- 
play of irresistible power, and a notice to all the world that the despot would bear 
no questioning of his royal whims. 

Rational motives fail to account for these excesses of violence, and indeed 
for the whole suicidal course of this atrocious reign. A steady line of conduct 
so opposed to common sense and self-interest, no less than to all rules of 
humanity and justice, must be referred to a strange mental exaltation, a zeal' 
inspired from beneath, the counterpart and yet the contrary of that which has 
produced the noblest heroes and saints. We are forced to believe with Mr. 
Motley that "Philip was fanatically impressed with his mission : his viceroy 
was possessed by his loyalty as by a demon. In this way alone that conduct which 
can never be palliated may at least be comprehended. It was Philip's enthusiasm 
to embody the wrath of God against heretics. It was Alva's enthusiasm to 
embody the wrath of Philip." 

Egmont, who had hoped for pardon to the last, and whose family were 
reduced to bitter poverty by his condemnation, may be excused for giving signs 
of impotent rage upon the scaffold. Horn met his fate with perfect composure: 
his aged mother, though he knew it not, had already given funds to support the 
insurrection. The uselessness of this attempt to terrorize the people might even 
then appear, for when a tyrant is no less hated than feared, his throne begins to 
totter. Though the square was lined with three thousand soldiers and the gov- 
ernor sat at a window opposite, tears were shed and muttered curses heard. 
Many even pressed forward to dip their kerchiefs in the blood of these involuntary 
martyrs of liberty. Their heads, it was said and believed, were sent to Spain, 
:for the king to feast his eyes upon : their headless bodies did more for the cause 
•of freedom than thev had done in life. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 



UPHILL WORK. 




HUS relieved from the necessity of guarding- 
his prisoners in Brussels, Alva marched 
north with almost his whole force. He 
found Louis intrenched close to Groningen, with 
a mutinous army of ten thousand or more, clam- 
oring for arrears of pay. Some of them, by skil- 
ful skirmishing, were lured forth on July 15th, 
and presently driven back; on this the whole 
force became alarmed and fled, burning the bridge 
behind them, and losing five or six hundred. 
Louis, who could no longer trust his men, ne- 
glected to seize a strong position at Reyden, and 
led them on to Jemmingen, where they were 
soon between the Spaniards and the river Ems. Here, as 
he told them, they would have to fight or be slaughtered ;, 
but there was little fight left in them. At the last moment they 
opened the gates to let in the tide and drive out the enemy ; but the advance 
guard of the Spaniards, wading knee deep, arrived in time to shut the gates and 
prevent further flooding of the ground. And now Alva's tactics won an easy 
victory. He had closed every avenue of escape, and occupied every building for 
miles. Again he sent his skirmishers forward to decoy the Beggars from their 
trenches, keeping his main body in reserve and out of sight. Hard pressed, the 
musketeers sent three times for help, but Alva told them to hold their own. 
At length, seeing little to oppose them, Louis concluded that the waters had 
done their work, and inarched forth. Suddenly attacked in force, his men 
turned and ran, leaving the general to fire the cannon with his own hand. The 
guns were seized a moment later, and turned upon their recent owners : the 
trenches were carried, the rebels cut down as they fled, or driven into the water.. 
Seven thousand fell, against only seven Spaniards. Louis of Nassau, the only 
man among them who seems to have kept his head and his nerve, escaped 
by swimming naked across the stream ; but few were equally fortunate. His. 
army was annihilated, and the first campaign, sadly ended. 

(509) 



5io THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

This "doleful affair occurred on July 21st. Three days before, a similar 
fate had befallen the third expedition of intending liberators, who entered the 
Netherlands at its other extremity. De Cocqueville, with twenty-five hundred 
Huguenots and Dutch Protestants, was driven from Artois back into France, and 
there overthrown by De Cosse on July 18th. 

AFTER JEMMINGEN. 

The affair at Jemmingen was a mere carnival of slaughter. As one who 
took part in it testified, "not a soldier, not even a boy who wished to share in the 
victory, but could find somebody to wound, to kill, to burn, or to drown." Many 
had fled to an island near the shore : next day, when the tide was down, the 
conquerors waded across, and killed them all. This butchery extended to all 
the country round. The harmless peasan: s and their families were treated as if 
they had been in Nassau's army. Every house on the road to Groningen was 
burned. The murdering and ravishing grew so uproarious that Alva thought it 
well to hang a few of his men as a lesson of moderation to the rest. At Utrecht, 
on the way back to Brussels, he had a widow of eighty-four years beheaded for 
sheltering a preacher. The offense had been committed by her son-in-law with- 
out her knowledge, and she was a Catholic ; her real crime was her wealth. On 
the scaffold she remarked, "I know what this is for: the calf is fat and must be 
killed." Then, turning to the executioner, "I hope your sword is sharp, for my 
neck is old and tough." 

The duke's return to the capital was signalized by a resumption of the judi- 
cial murders. Besides the ordinary victims, there were four men of some note, 
who had been so torn to pieces on the rack that they had to be carried to the 
scaffold and tied to their chairs upon it. The most eminent of these was Van 
Straalen, the burgomaster of Antwerp, who had supplied most of the funds for 
the campaign of St. Quentin. Even the Blood-Council had thought his public 
services a reason for sparing his life. Two others were the secretaries of Horn 
and Egmont. Bakkerzeel, though at first a member of the Confederacy, had 
distinguished himself, as we have seen, by his severities after the image- 
breaking. The promiscuous cruelty of Alva was expended alike on friends and 
foes, Catholics and Protestants, lovers of liberty and tools of despotism. Red- 
Rod, the Sheriff of Brabant, was one of these. After bringing hundreds to the 
gallows, he was hanged on a charge of executing many without a warrant, and 
suffering others to escape for a bribe. One could wish that his friend Titelmann 
had shared his fate. 

The death of Don Carlos, the heir to the Spanish crown, was not announced 
-till after the return from Jemmingen, though it had occurred some time before. 
A youth of ungovernable temper and half mad, he had some designs upon the 
^Netherlands, and was accused of treasonable dealings there. He gave Philip 




5" 



5 i2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

much trouble, and was condemned by the Inquisition. The details of his end 
are not certainly known, but it was believed to have been accomplished by his 
father's order. 

At this time one of Alva's sons arrived with such large reinforcements that 
he reviewed at Utrecht thirty thousand foot and seven thousand cavalry. This 
increase of his troops made the task of Orange still more difficult, and the cause 
of freedom apparently hopeless. 

All William's friends now urged him to bide his time, and attempt nothing 
more for the present. "Your highness must sit still," said the German princes. 
The "pitiable misfortune" at Jemmingen, as he wrote to Louis, "hinders us 
much in the levy we are making, and has greatly chilled the hearts of those 
who otherwise would have been ready to give us assistance." Still he was not 
discouraged. The emperor ordered him to lay down his arms, and threatened 
him with loss of all his privileges in the empire if he continued to annoy "our 
excellent brother and cousin Philip ;" he replied that the king might mean well, 
but the Duke of Alva was governing vilely and must be resisted. On the last 
day of August, 1568, he issued a proclamation to the Netherlanders, announcing 
that he took up arms "to oppose the violent tyranny of the Spaniards," and 
summoning "all loyal subjects to come and help" him. This document bore his 
motto, "For the law, the king, and the people." 

Contributions were now scanty, and such as came were chiefly from those 
who could ill afford them and had felt most sharply the fangs of persecution. 
For instance, "a poor Anabaptist preacher collected a small sum from a refugee 
congregation on the outskirts of Holland, and brought it, at the peril of his life, 
into the prince's camp. It came from people, he said, whose will was better 
than the gift ; they never wished to be repaid, except by kindness when the 
cause of reform should be triumphant." He spoke to no deaf ears, but to one 
of the very few men who had received the doctrine of tolerance. Orange was by 
this time a declared Protestant, but no narrow sectarian. He deplored the jealous 
rivalry between Lutheran and Calvinist, which did so much to hinder progress ;. 
he believed and urged that all lovers of the Truth should live as brethren and 
unite in the cause of liberty. 

FIRST CAMPAIGN OF ORANGE. 

Chiefly at his own expense, he gathered an army of twenty thousand foot: 
and nine thousand horse. On a moonlight night early in October he crossed 
the Meuse into Limburg. The water was up to the shoulders of the footmen, 
but the force of the current was broken for them by the cavalry, standing to- 
gether in a compact body. This plan had been devised and recorded sixteen, 
hundred years before by Caesar; its repetition now was much admired, and 
gained for Orange no little reputation. Alva would not believe that the thing. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



5 J 3 



had been done, but said, "Is his army a flock of wild geese, to fly over rivers 
like the Meuse?" But this exploit afforded the only glory the prince was to 
reap in his whole campaign. 

Recognizing that duty of humanity which the Spaniards despised, he sent 
a herald to suggest that prisoners taken on either side should be exchanged, not 
killed. The herald was hanged at once. This incident was suggestive. Apart 
from physical disparity, William was under the disadvantage which a gentleman 
suffers in a conflict with a ruffian. He could not use the methods of his 
enemy 

It soon appeared that Alva would 
not fight, but meant to wear out his 
adversary by delay. He chose to run 
no risk, since the other had everything 
to gain, and he had everj^thing to lose. 
Should the liberator chance to win a 
victory, the provinces might rise ; as 
it was, the terrible memory of Jem- 
mingen kept them down and Alva's 
credit up. He had a standing army, 
whereas Orange could not long keep 
his troops together without some suc- 
cess in the field. Therefore he declined 
every challenge, and contented himself 
with watching the prince closely, and 
following him from place to place. He 
was a great strategist, and made, from 
the viewpoint of scientific war, a mas- 
terly campaign. 

Hoogstraten one day taunted Louis 
Nassau with his recent defeat. ' ' Why," 
said he, " we have been here some time 
now, and seen nothing of the Spaniards 
but their backs." "When you see their faces," Louis retorted, "you will remem- 
ber them the rest of your life." That life, to the loss of the cause, was to last 
but a few days longer. 

DISASTER OF THE GETA. 

Though Alva's men were eager to fight, nothing beyond skirmishes at the 
outposts occurred till October 20th. On that day Orange crossed the Geta, leav- 
ing Hoogstraten with the rear guard of three thousand to protect the crossing 
or tempt the enemy. The enemy took the bait, but not the hook. The rear- 
guard were surrounded and cut to pieces. Some took refuge in a house near by : 




TOWER OF JOAN OF ARC, ROUEN. 




ALVA AND HIS ARMY ENTERING BRUSSELS., 



5 '4 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 5 r 5 

it was set on fire, and they fell by their own swords or upon the lances of the 
Spaniards, who stood by to mock their last agonies. Alva's sou sent in haste, 
begging his father to advance and destroy the main body of the rebels : the duke 
refused to allow a man to cross the stream. A young officer cried out in anger, 
" Will you never fight ? " Alva smiled and replied, "It is your business to fight, 
mine to tell you when to do it." 

A few days after this disaster, Orange was joined by the Count de Genlis, 
with thirty-five hundred Huguenots. But the campaign was practically over. 
The liberator was everywhere disowned by those he came to save. Whatever 
might be the feelings of the people, they knew too well the narrow chances of 
success, and the penalties that awaited rebellion, to give any outward sign of 
sympathy. The cities closed their gates, and supplies were hard to get. The 
soldiers clamored for a battle and for their pay. There was nothing to do but 
retreat into France. Genlis wished the prince to remain there and help the 
Huguenots, and this he was minded to do, but the army would not hear of it. 
He disbanded them at Strasburg, and was still in their debt, after paying every 
dollar he could raise. 

Great festivities greeted the viceroy's return to Brussels ; he required them, 
and the people rejoiced under penalties for not rejoicing. He set up his own 
colossal statue in the new citadel of Antwerp, with an inscription stating that he 
had " extinguished sedition, chastised rebellion, restored religion, secured justice, 
and established peace." In the peculiar meaning he attached to the words jus- 
tice and religion, he perhaps thought he had really done all this. The statue 
stood a few years, and was pulled down by his successor. 

Certain negotiations, which followed between the high powers of Europe, 
have little interest for us. The German emperor, who had been urged to mediate 
between the contending parties, offered a sort of remonstrance to Philip. In 
reply the king praised his own " great clemency and gentleness," and said that 
Orange was a bad man, and rightly responsible for all the heresy, image-break- 
ing, rebellion, and other wickedness that had disturbed the Netherlands. There 
was more of this foolishness, which had no effect but to add to the difficulties of 
the prince and the increasing coolness of his German allies. Maximilian II. was 
no friend to liberty nor to its defenders, and he wished to see his daughter become 
Queen of Spain. 

The year 1569 brought nothing of encouragement. William issued com- 
missions to some privateers, of whom we shall hear more by and by, and visited 
the Huguenot leaders in France, as has been mentioned in an earlier chapter. 
Alva had a promising quarrel with Elizabeth of England, and received the high 
honor of a jewelled hat and sword from the pope. The persecutions went on as 
usual. Four eminent priests, who had received the new doctrines, had been for 
three years in prison at the Hague : their cases being now brought to mind, they 



516 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



were degraded, strangled, and burned. A famous incident shows one of the many 
disadvantages that hampered the Reformed in their struggle with those who 
knew no impulse of humanity or justice. Dirk Willemzoon, a poor Anabaptist, 
fled across a frozen lake, with the sheriff after him. The ice broke under the 
pursuer, who screamed for help. The fugitive turned, and with much difficulty 
and danger rescued his enemy, thus losing his own life ; for a burgomaster was 
at hand to insist that the officer should not release his prisoner, who was soon 



writhing in a slow fire. 



ALVA'S NEW TAXES. 



Alva's system of supporting the government by cutting off the heads and 
emptying the pockets of the governed worked well till the stream ran dry. He 




AT THE DOOR OF A HOUSE IN THE ISLAND OF MARKEN. 



now set his purely military talents to work upon the finances. The mountain 
labored, and brought forth, not a mouse, but a monster. Setting aside in this 
respect, as he had previously done in others, the old laws and constitutions of 
the provinces, he devised a threefold tax. First, one per cent, was to be paid at 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 517 

once on the value of all property of whatever kind ; second, five per cent, on every 
transfer of real estate ; and third, ten per cent, on every sale, from an apple to a 
farm or warehouse. The two latter taxes were to be perpetual. Thus if a jack- 
knife or a diamond ring changed hands ten times, the government would be 
richer by its entire value, and the successive owners, between them, that much 
poorer. 

This fine scheme did not work as well as the governor expected. People 
might be willing to go to the stake for their opinions, to have spies set about the 
cradle and the deathbed to see whether the rites of the Church were duly prac- 
tised and respected ; but the pocket is a sacred thing, not to be rudely touched. 
Great and general was the murmuring. Viglius, always docile in matters of mere 
bloodshed, openly objected to the tenth, the twentieth, and no less to the hun- 
dreth penny. The city and province of Utrecht offered to commute, but posi- 
tively refused to pay the tax. Soldiers were billeted in every house, and knocked 
their hosts about at will ; still they would not yield. Resistance, of course, was 
more expensive than submission ; they were summoned before the Blood-Coun- 
cil, and declared guilty of high treason. All their charters were taken away, 
all their possessions forfeited. After six months spent in exchanging pleas, re- 
joinders, and other legal papers, Vargas rode to Utrecht to execute the sentence. 
"Many thousand citizens were ruined, many millions of property confiscated." 

No sooner was this new measure broached, than the duke sent to his master 
an inflated account of its success. All the provinces, he said, had consented to the 
tax. The hundredth penny would bring in five millions at least ; the tenth and 
twentieth would furnish a perpetual income of two millions or more. A little 
later his figures had risen ; some speculators had offered him four millions a 
year for the tenth penny alone, but it was worth much more. All this vaporing 
did not raise his credit; his plan was cursed in the Netherlands, and laughed at 
in Spain. The provinces soon revoked their consent to the two annual taxes, 
and the matter had to be compromised for a fixed sum payable till August, 1571. 

The viceroy was now much out of humor, and wished to be relieved from 
his post. A pretended amnesty, which he published in July, 1570, only added to 
the general discontent. It was considered to offer pardon to nobody except the 
innocent, for all those who had had anything to do with the Compromise, the 
Request, the preachings, the image-breakings, or the armed resistance to author- 
ity, were expressly excluded; and not only such, but all who had failed to 
denounce the Reformers, or had ever been suspected of heresy or schism. If the 
king and his governor thought to pacify the Netherlands by such childish in- 
sults to intelligence, they were mistaken. In an unusual fit of mental openness, 
Alva wrote thus : "It is not wonderful the whole nation should be ill-disposed 
toward me, for I certainly have done nothing to make them love me. At the 
same time, such language from Madrid does not increase their affection. '" What 




CROSSING TO MARKEN. 



518 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 519 

most irritated the people in the so-called Pardon was its invitation to the guilty 
to come ■ forward and to confess within six months; this called forth more sar- 
casms than responses. 

The monotony of this 3 T ear, 1570, was broken by three notable events. 
Montigny, who had been first detained and then confined in Spain, was privately 
strangled in his prison at Simancas before daylight on October 16th, and it was 
given out that he had died of fever. He was no more a traitor than his brother 
Horn: his guilt, it may be remembered, consisted in having offered some mild 
remonstrances against the earlier steps of Philip's tyranny. He had been con- 
demned in his absence by the Blood-Council, and, had he been at home, would 
doubtless have been executed with the other nobles. 

On November 1st and 2d a terrible tidal wave devastated the lands along the 
coast. Dykes were broken and cities inundated ; all Friesland was under water. 
Vessels were carried far inland, and even the southern provinces suffered greatly. 
The destruction of life and property was enormous. The Spaniards said that 
Heaven was celebrating All Saints' Day by taking vengeance on the heretics. 

DE RUYTER'S EXPLOIT. 

The castle of Lowenstein stood on the isle of Bommel, at the junction of 
the Meuse and Waal. Commanding these rivers and two adjoining towns, it 
was a place of some importance. In December it was the scene of an act of 
desperate heroism, the forerunner of many. A drover named De Ruyter, with 
three companions, entered the castle disguised as monks, and gained possession 
of it. The next day they were joined by twenty-five more. A large force, which 
was on its way, was delayed by the terrible condition of the roads. Before they 
could arrive, two hundred Spaniards attacked the place, and took it after two 
days' severe labor. De Ruyter's men were killed or taken ; he stood in a door- 
way, wielding his terrible sword, under which many fell. At length, covered 
with wounds and feeling his strength give way, he fired a train of powder which 
he had laid, and went into eternity with his foes. The heart of Orange must 
have leaped when he heard the tale. Such deeds were to open the provinces to 
their deliverer and clear the way for the founding of the Dutch Republic. 

The year 15 71 brought no gain to either party. Philip was deep in plots lb 
kill or capture Queen Elizabeth. He asked his viceroy to send ten thousand 
soldiers to England for this purpose ; but Alva, while highly approving so pious 
a design, had no mind to spare his troops, and contented himself with forwarding 
a few Italian assassins. The tax was now renewed, and great disputes and diffi- 
culties arose about the tenth penny on all sales ; it had to be remitted on corn, 
meat, wine, beer, and raw materials for manufacture. Alva's disgust increased 
with that of his subjects, and he hailed with joy the prospect of a successor; the 
Duke of Medina Coeli was appointed in September to take his place, but delayed 
coming. 



520 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



The condition of Orange began to improve. He had been desperately poor, 
loaded with debt, and not only beneath the hope of raising another army, but 
unable to pay the arrears due to his soldiers of 156S; but he never lost heart, 
submitted cheerfully to heavy sacrifices, and kept thoroughly informed of all 
that was passing. His enemies looked on him with contempt, and some of his 
friends thought his case past mending ; but they were mistaken. "Orange is 




#5 

TOWN HALL, KAMPEN. 

plainly perishing," said one; and Granvelle proposed to drag his escutcheon in 
the dust and have his family degraded. Reverses, desertions, outward dishonor, 
he bore with the same calm resignation. Having learned by dire experience that 
no help was to be had from princes, he looked more and more to the plain people. 
In papers sown broadcast by his agents, he said that he had done what he could, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 521 

and now others must bear their part ; he called on the exiles, on the Protestant 
congregations, on the friends of liberty everywhere, to give their mites with their 
prayers, to stand by the sacred cause and against the common enemy. He did 
not call in vain. Contributions came in ; his partisans increased ; every Dutch 
patriot looked to him as chief and leader; the spirit of resistance to tyranny was 
ripening, and many waited only for an opportunity to strike 

ALVA LOSING CREDIT. 

Meanwhile Alva was losing all support but that of his soldiers. His 
former props and counsellors, Viglius, Berlaymont, even Noircarmes, felt and 
were free to own that the land had had enough and too much of him. They 
wrote to Spain that he had gone too far, that his financial measures were 
ruinous. They said as much to Don Francis de Alava, the Spanish ambassador 
to France, who came to Brussels early in 1572 to look into the condition of 
affairs. He had seen something of the emigration to France ; for the Catholics 
of the southern provinces were flocking thither, as the Calvinists of Holland 
had long been doing to England. Noircarmes met him on the way. " The 
duke," he said, "will never get this filthy tenth penny out of his head. Ten 
thousand more are going. It must be stopped." After a brief visit, Don Francis 
wrote to the king that the governor had too many unwise and impracticable 
notions, that his pet tax of ten per cent, could never be raised, and that the 
whole land cried out for his departure. 

These statements were 'entirely true. Misgovernment had been carried to 
the point at which it ceased to be endurable. Viglius wrote to his friend Hop- 
per, " The disease is gnawing at our vitals. Everybody is suffering for the 
necessaries of life. Multitudes are in extreme and hopeless poverty." The 
soldiers, who had not been paid of late, became troublesome to their employers 
and more oppressive than ever to the citizens. People grew desperate. The 
absurd tax had put an end to wholesale trade, and was fast stopping the wheels 
of every smaller business. The shops were closed ; bread and meat were no 
longer to be had. As a native chronicler testifies, "The brewers refused to 
brew, the bakers to bake, the tapsters to tap." Alva, in a rage, resolved to hang 
eighteen tradesmen as an example to the rest. The cords were ready, and 
Viglius had been waked at midnight to draw up the warrants, when a most 
unexpected event put an end to these proceedings, and saved the lives of the 
doomed bakers and butchers. The Beggars had shown their hands. A town 
had fallen ; rebellion had at last found a foothold in the dominions of the most 
Catholic King. The revolution had begun. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



REBELLION AND ITS PUNISHMENT. 




F the Spaniards were thus far masters of the land, 
the Netherlanders were more at home upon the 
water. This was almost the native 
element of the wild Zealanders, who 
were sailors and fishermen from their 
cradles ; and throughout the central 
and northern provinces the inlets, bays, 
rivers, and canals made the people half 
amphibious. The sea was a cause of 
constant danger, as well as a medium 
of traffic and a source of supplies : it 
was to play a large and often a most 
useful part in the struggle for liberty. 
Of late many whose former means of 
subsistence were gone, or who could not endure the oppressions of Alva and 
his minions, took to the ocean and became rovers, sometimes little better than 
pirates. Among these were men of birth and station, outlawed nobles who had 
injuries of their own to avenge and longed to repay- their tyrants for the death 
of relatives and friends. To these Orange, as we have seen, issued letters of 
marque, authorizing them to attack Spanish vessels. This irregular naval war 
was at once their business and their joy : the Beggars of the Sea were gaining 
a name of dread. The prince restrained their excesses as well as he could, lay- 
ing down rules for their observance, and appointing to commands the principal 
men among them ; but he could not be present to see that they kept within these 
limits, and their manners were rough at best. There had been abundant oppor- 
tunity, indeed, to learn the worst possible manners from their oppressors. In a 
war with those who knew no restraint and gave no quarter, the gentle temper of 
Orange could not always be expected to prevail ; nor was the prince strong enough 
to refuse assistance, from whatever quarter it came. 

His first admiral, for want of a better, was the ferocious William de la Marck, 

a descendant of the famous robber baron called the Wild Boar of Ardennes, and 

a relative of Egmont, whose death he bitterly lamented. Another leader of the 

Sea Beggars was William de Blois, Lord of Treslong, who had lost a brother in 

(522) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 523 

the same way, and escaped, with Nassau, from the slaughter of Jemmingen. 
These men, with a fleet of twenty-four small vessels, were lying off Dover at the 
end of March, when Elizabeth, to avoid offending Philip and Alva, ordered her 
subjects to sell them no more provisions. To replenish their larder, they sailed 
across the North sea, and halted, rather by accident than design, in the channel 
which receives the waters of the Meuse and separates the towns of Brill and 
Maas. All they wanted was food, for they were nearly starved : but their hunger 
led to great results. 

THE SEA BEGGARS TAKE BRILL. 

The people of the neighborhood were much alarmed ; but Koppelstok, a 
ferryman and a patriot, rowed out to the fleet and boarded Treslong's ship. After 
a little consultation, he was sent back to demand the surrender of Brill and the 
visit of deputies to arrange terms with the admiral. The astonished magistrate 
asked, "How many men has he?" Coolly multiplying the real number by 
twelve or fifteen, Koppelstok answered, "Perhaps five thousand." The deputies 
were sent, and informed that no harm would be done to the peaceable, but that 
Alva's power was to be overthrown : the authorities might have two hours to con- 
sider their reply. This was on April 1st, 1572. 

Brill was a place of some importance and well fortified, but the garrison had 
lately been removed to Utrecht. Treslong, whose father had been its governor, 
knew the town well, and is entitled to the chief credit of this affair. The mag- 
istrates and most of the citizens, having no confidence in the Beggars, employed 
the two hours in escaping ; and the assailants, when they landed, had no difficulty 
in breaking down the gates and taking possession, which they did in the name 
of Orange, as stadtholder for the king. Thus did liberty gain its first foothold 
in the region that was to be its home. 

The first care of the conquerors was to select their quarters and find materi- 
als for a dinner ; their next was to plunder the churches, for sacrilege was their 
favorite sin. Only about fifty people had remained in the town : among these 
were thirteen priests and monks, whom La Marck cruelly put to death. 

Alva, in a fierce rage, at once ordered Count Bossu, who had succeeded 
Orange as stadtholder of Holland and Zealand, to retake Brill. He came by 
water with a force much larger than that of the Beggars. No sooner had they 
landed, than Treslong and another rowed out to the Spanish vessels, fired some 
of them, and cut others adrift ; while a bold carpenter swam with his axe to the 
sluice, cut it, and let in the waters on the north of the town. The Spaniards, 
after a brief attempt upon the southern gate, made off in haste to their remain- 
ing ships, and many were drowned in their dangerous flight. 

OUTRAGE AT ROTTERDAM. 

Bossu, thus baffled, made haste to Rotterdam. The gates were closed, and 
the magistrates refused to admit a garrison, but agreed to let the troops pass 




524 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 525. 

through without stopping, a corporal's guard at a time. The treacherous com- 
mander swore to observe these conditions ; but with the entrance of the first party, 
the whole band rushed in and cut down all before them. The innocent citizens 
had trusted an officer's word; but Bossu himself stabbed a blacksmith who 
stood by the gate with his sledge-hammer. Hundreds were murdered, and 
women outraged as freely as if the city had been taken by assault. It was deeds 
like this which made the Spaniards more than odious, and caused savage repris- 
als to be made when they fell into the power of the natives. The Beggars felt 
themselves to be avengers. 

Finding that Brill was securely held by La Marck, and violence offered to 
none but priests, its inhabitants began to return. They and their neighbors 
were forced to swear allegiance to Orange. The prudent and methodical prince 
was not wholly pleased with these doings. He thought that the place could not 
be kept, and he probably felt that his admiral was less dangerous at sea than on 
land. That rover, in fact, had so little conception of the value of his prize that 
he wished to burn the town and sail away. His orders had actually gone out to 
that effect, when Treslong, whose wits were of a higher order, persuaded him to 
recall them. It was he, rather than his immediate superior or the chief in whose 
name they both acted, who laid the corner-stone of the new state. 

Even the Prince of Orange could not foresee that the half-accidental cap- 
ture of Brill would be the spark to fire a vast train ; but so it was. The work 
of liberation, painfully and vainly attempted from without by the aid of hired 
armies, was begun by a chance swoop of Beggars of the Sea, and carried on by 
spontaneous risings of those who had borne oppression too long. 

FLUSHING RISES. 

"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." Alva, chiefly con- 
cerned for the cities of Flanders, Brabant, and the southern provinces, had com- 
paratively neglected and despised the islands and canals to the north. Flushing, 
on the south shore of the Isle of Walcheren, was the first to rise. It had an 
unfinished fort and, for the moment, a very small garrison. De Herpt, a gentle- 
man of the place, called on the citizens to drive out the Spaniards. It was done, 
and just in time, for vessels presently arrived with a much larger force. A 
drunken vagabond offered, for a pot of beer, to fire two cannon at the ships. Not 
knowing how sudden and casual was this resistance, they turned and sailed away. 
The governor of the island came next day to recall the rebels to their duty by 
argument; he was laughed at and ordered off. The burghers sent to Brill for 
men, and La Marck, who had been gathering recruits, spared them two hundred 
under Treslong. These presented a strange appearance, for some wore the cha- 
subles and vestments taken from the churches, and others the gowns and cowls 
of monks. It was the delight of the Sea Beggars to mock the religion which. 



526 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



s:'s 



their tyrants had sought to force upon them with fire and sword. Treslon & 
drinking-cup, after the capture of Brill, was a golden chalice meant for the altar 
and the mass. 

On the very day of their arrival, their rage against the foreigners was 
wreaked on one whose life might well have been spared. Pacheco, the distin- 
guished Italian engineer who had built the citadel of Antwerp, not knowing 

what had occurred, came to Flushing to com- 
plete its fortress. To his surprise, he found 
himself among mortal enemies. He asked in 
vain for a soldier's death, and was hanged with 
two Spaniards. 

The prince, who had no liking for such 
deeds, soon removed Treslong from this com- 
mand, and sent Zeraerts as Governor of 
Walcheren. Flushing was soon made 
secure by a mixed garrison of Dutch, 
French, and English; but half the island 
was still held for Alva, and many bloody 

combats en- 
sued, in which 
both sides 
showed equal 
ferocity, and 
no quarter 
iwas given. 

The be- 
Jffe ginning made 
at Brill was 
followed up 
by many other 
towns besides 
Flushing. 
Enkhuisen, 
on the Zuyder 
Zee, changed 

its government with neither violence within nor help from outside. Within a 
short time Harlem, Eeyden, Alkmaar, and nearly every city in Holland, Zea- 
land, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overyssel, and Friesland displayed the banners of 
Orange. In some the revolution was accomplished easily and quietly, in others 
with tumult and bloodshed. The patriots had long accounts to settle, and all 
were not as forgiving as a certain widow of Gouda. The burgomaster, who- 




A QUAY IN ROTTERDAM. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 52/ 

had slain her husband among many others, fled to her house for refuge She 
showed him a secret place. " Is it safe?" he asked anxiously. "O yes " she 
said: "my man lay there when you were after him, and you did not find him 
then." 

FREEDOM WINS IN THE NORTH. 

Each of the cities, as it threw off the Spanish yoke, elected new magistrates 
who promised to resist Alva, his Blood- Council, his tenth penny, and the Inqui- 
sition, " to support the freedom of each and the welfare of all, to protect widows 
orphans, and the poor, and to maintain justice and truth." They also swore 




FLUSHING. 
It was here the Spaniards left the Netherlands, and the parting took place between Philip of Spain and William the SUcni. 

fidelity to the king, and to Orange as his stadtholder. The prince had accepted 
this office in 1559, and now resumed it without regard to Philip's wishes ; the 
fiction of loyalty it was thought necessary to keep up for some time yet. All 
that was done and claimed was on the basis of the ancient charters and the oath 
which the king had taken at his coronation. This he had broken a thousand 
times, and Alva had set aside all law but his own will. The plan of the new 
government was restoration, not destruction; and "the king," in all these 



528 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

commissions and oaths of allegiance, meant the king's legal rights, no more — not 
at all his personal desires and schemes of tyranny. This distinction, which to our 
minds may appear too finespun, was then understood everywhere, and had its 
parallels in other risings before and after — for the day of republics had not yet 
come. As a king's officer in this extremely qualified sense, Orange now appointed 
his subordinates, and sent Sonoy to be Governor of North Holland, with instruc- 
tions to restore the exiles and provide for the free preaching of the gospel, but 
not to interfere with the old worship. He also supplied the form of an oath to 
be taken by "all magistrates and officers of guilds and brotherhoods." One of 
its provisions was in these words : " Those of 'the religion' shall offer no hin- 
drance to the Roman churches." 

This is an essential part of the prince's claims to immortal honor, that in an 
age of bitter intolerance he announced and insisted on the great principle of 
religious toleration. The only other public man who had grasped the idea at 
this time was L'Hopital, the great Chancellor of France; and he soon resigned 
his office, finding his large views constantly thwarted by the bigotry of those 
about him. The part : sans of Orange were not generally in sympathy with him 
on this point. Even long after his death, the flames of theologic rancor wrought 
havoc and misery in the state whose foundations he laid so well ; but while he 
lived and so far as his power extended, he enforced liberty of thought and 
worship, and refused to repay to priests and inquisitors the cruelties which Rome 
had wrought on Protestants. 

The southern provinces, as has been said, were more firmly held by Alva 
than those of the north. The Reformation had made good headway there, but 
had been savagely repressed. After years of the Inquisition, the massacres, and 
the tenth penny, it is not wonderful that risings were less frequent in this defense- 
less inland region than among the sea-dogs of Zealand and along the shores of 
the Zuyder Zee. But even in the south the viceroy was to have a lesson. 

TAKING OF MONS. 

Louis of Nassau had not his brother's prudence and steadiness, but he had 
fidelity, gallantry, and dash. "He had been for some time in France, on a secret 
mission ; Alva sent an agent there, to watch him and report. This man was 
Antony Oliver, a painter of Mons, the capital of Hainault, an important town 
near the French border. Though in the pay of Spain, his heart was with Orange r 
who knew his real character. He had the skill and daring which a spy needs, 
and he and Louis between them laid a plot to astonish Europe. Having made 
his arrangements within and without, Oliver entered Mons May 23d, 1572, with 
three wagons filled with arms, duly covered. Louis had fifteen hundred men in 
the woods within a few miles, and sent a dozen of them into the city in disguise. 
The next morning before daylight they bribed the porter to open one of the 




529 



530 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

gates ; Louis rode in with fifty troopers, and tried to raise the town. But their 
friends did not answer the signal as expected, and the army which was to follow 
close also failed to appear. The fine plot was near failing, and the bold fifty 
were in danger. Nassau rode out in haste, and found that his Frenchmen had 
lost their way in the forest. He led them back at a gallop, each horse carrying 
double, and arrived in the very nick of time, for all the gates but one were closed, 
and the drawbridge before that was ; ' rising. A gallant Frenchman urged his 
horse upon it : it sank beneath the weight. The little army rode in, and the 
town was taken. 

Genlis, La Noue, and other Huguenots, were parties to this affair : their first 
care was to assure the magistrates and citizens, assembled in the market place, 
that no French conquest was intended. Louis then told them that he wanted 
no new oaths, but only observance of the old ones. Religion should not be dis- 
turbed. He was no rebel, but an enemy to Alva, whom he asked the authorities 
to denounce in the plainest and strongest terms. They did not see their way to 
do this, nor yet to support his soldiers : but the manufacturers and merchants 
came forward and did what was necessary. Nassau, whose manners were of 
another sort from those of La Marck and Treslong, allowed no violence, and 
Mons was soon securely held and garrisoned — for the time at least — in the 
prince's name. A quantity of plate, monej'', and other property belonging to 
the various churches and convents, which had been sent to Mons for safety, fell 
into Louis' hands. 

Alva would not believe the news at first : he was sure that Nassau was still 
in Paris, playing tennis and watched by spies. When satisfied that Mons had 
really fallen, he sent his son to besiege it, with four thousand men. There 
were now about as many w T ithin the walls, for Montgomery, who killed Henry II. 
of France in the tournament, had arrived with twenty-five hundred. At this 
time, as will be remembered, Coligny was apparently in high favor with 
Charles IX., and urging him to declare against Spain. The Huguenots, in 
actively helping their friends in the Netherlands, were only anticipating the 
course they hoped their government would soon take. 

Within three weeks after the taking of Mons, a much greater booty fell into 
the hands of the insurgents. A rich fleet from Lisbon, knowing nothing of 
recent events, anchored near Flushing, and was promptly seized. Besides 
ammunition and a thousand prisoners, it yielded half a million golden crowns 
and a vast quantity of goods — enough, it was estimated, to support the war for 
two years, though it was not available for the immediate needs of Orange. 

This fleet came on the track of another, which escaped the Beggars with 
difficulty and some loss. The first arrived on June ioth, and brought Medina 
Cceli, who had been commissioned as governor. Finding that the work ahead 
was war instead of peace, he declined to supersede so famous a general as Alva. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



53i 



During his stay of less than half a year, the two dukes were nominally equal in 
dignity, but the power remained where it was before. 



THE ESTATES MEET. 

The viceroy, wnose treasury was now empty, announced his willingness to 
commute the tenth penny for an income of two million florins, and summoned 




GENUS AND HIS ARMY ATTACKED NEAR MOXS. 

the Estates of Holland to meet on July 15th. They met at Dort on that day, not 
on his call but at that of Orange. Amsterdam was scill held by Alva, and some 
of the towns were afraid to send deputies, but twelve responded. They listened 
to a speech from Marnix of Saint Aldegonde, and voted taxes to pay an army of 
twenty-four thousand, which the prince had raised. Alva, commenting on this 



53-2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

complained to Philip, "It almost drives me mad to see how hard it is to raise 
your majesty's supplies, and how liberally the people place their lives and 
fortunes at the disposal of this rebel." He could not understand that there is a 
difference between taxation with representation and without. The delegates 
appointed persons to conduct the war by sea under the direction of La Marck, 
whose commission as admiral was confirmed ; and they had the sense lo admit 
that, since many Catholics were foes of Alva and friends of liberty, the free 
exercise of both religions must be maintained. It was even thought necessary 
to threaten death against those who should suppress or disturb any form of wor- 
ship — a penalty not always easy to enforce. 

Genlis had raised a considerable force in France, and was coming to relieve 
the siege of Mons, when he was attacked on July 19th, near the city, and com- 
pletely routed. Twelve hundred of his men were cut down by the Spaniards, 
and many more by the peasants in their flight : only a hundred escaped to Mons. 
Alva's son, Don Frederic of Toledo, got the credit of this victory, which was 
really won by two much abler soldiers, Vitelli and Romero. Their army 
suffered hardly any loss. Genlis, whose rashness had caused this disaster, was 
taken prisoner with many of his officers, and privately executed the next year in 
the citadel of Antwerp. 

Orange had already entered the provinces from Germany, and on July 23d 
took Roermonde. His hired troops committed some acts of violence upon the 
Romish clergy, whom he was not able entirely to protect, though he renewed 
his order to respect the rights of person, property, and conscience. It was not an 
easy matter to teach professional soldiers new manners, and check the excesses 
hitherto allowed in every war ; but the prince always did this as far as he 
could, whereas Alva ordered his men to murder prisoners and non-combatants, 
and systematically encouraged robbery and rape. The two armies might differ 
chiefly in degree of license, but their chiefs were perfect opposites. In the vice- 
roy's view, rebels and heretics, or those by chance associated with them, had no 
rights, and it was a duty to kill and ruin: with the liberator, humanity was 
sacred, and war a thing to be civilized as fast as possible. 

THE NEWS OF ST BARTHOLOMEW. 

His troops would not advance till they were paid. As soon as he received 
guarantees from Holland, he moved westward, meeting little opposition. Some 
of the towns welcomed him with joy, and others readily received his garrisons. 
Among them was Mechlin, midway between Brussels and Antwerp. With the 
capital he could do nothing ; but he was in the heart of the country, and in daily 
expectation of reinforcements from France, when his progress was stayed by the 
frightful calamity of St. Bartholomew. Till the very hour when his course was 
changed by the wicked counsels of his mother, Charles IX. had been intending, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



533 



or at least promising, to send his armies to the Netherlands to support Orange 
and drive out the Spaniards. So he had written in direct terms to Louis of 
Nassau, and so Coligny and the leading Protestants believed. Instead of this, 
he had suddenly let loose a horde of murderers upon his unsuspecting victims, 
and deluged France with Huguenot blood. 

The news was received everywhere with horror or fiendish joy ; but it fell 
"with the blow of a sledge-hammer" on the great heart of Orange and on the ris- 
ing hopes of liberty. Philip wrote Alva that the ambassador of Charles IX. 




DUTCH PROTESTANTS WORSHIPPING IN CAVES. 

urged him to execute all the French 
prisoners, with those who should be 
taken at Mons; "Do it at once," he 
added. These men had gone to the 
Netherlands with the connivance of 
the master who now doomed them to destruction, and their fate was not long to be 
delayed. To make sure, Charles sent the same directions to his envoy in the 



534 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

north, who on September 15th wrote back that Alva was cutting off heads every 
day, but suggested that the French king should call his subjects back from Mons. 
He answered — this he wrote in so many words to Charles himself — "They will 
not trust his Most Christian Majesty, but will prefer to die in Moiis" — as well 
they might. 

Meantime Alva had joined the besiegers, with Medina Cceli and others of 
high degree. He would not come out of his camp, knowing, as in 1568, that 
time worked for him and against Orange, whose army was enlisted for a short 
time only. The Archbishop of Cologne, whom he called "a fine figure of a man, 
with his corslet and pistols," urged him to fight, but in vain. At one in the 
morning of September 12th Romero with six hundred Spaniards surprised the 
prince's camp, slaughtered the sentinels and many more, and almost captured 
William, who had but a moment to escape. His pet dog, by barking and 
scratching, awoke him just in time to avoid immediate death or a scaffold in 
Brussels. His personal attendants were slain, and only the imprudence of the 
assailants in firing the tents enabled the army to see their foes and turn upon 
them. Romero drew his men off with a loss of but sixty, after killing full ten 
times that number. 

SURRENDER OF MONS. 

The prince's brief hour of success was over. His troops refused to serve 
longer, mutinied, even threatened his person. A hired assassin, one of many 
that were to come, attempted his life. The southern cities renounced his cause 
and returned to their tyrants. He wrote, "It has pleased God to take away 
every hope we founded upon man. The King of France has owned that he 
ordered the massacre, has sent aid to Alva, and forbidden his subjects, on pain 
of death, to assist me. But for this, we had been masters of the duke." He 
could do nothing for his brother, sick and in danger at Mons, but advise him to 
make the best terms he might with the besiegers. With a few devoted friends 
he repaired to Holland, "having determined there to make his sepulchre." 

The defenders of Mons were almost as demoralized as the mercenaries of 
Orange. Alva, who was in a hurry, offered good ferms, and they were accepted. 
The soldiers were to march out with the honors of war, having promised not to 
serve against Spain or France. Count Louis, for himself and his Englishmen 
and Germans, scornfully refused to take this pledge, and was. excused from it 
He received many compliments from the victors, who would have been glad to 
take his life. The city was evacuated on September 21st. Such of the citizens 
as were Protestants or had borne arms were to leave, taking their property along, 
Some of these, imprudently trusting to Spanish honor, remained a few days to 
settle their affairs, and were arrested. 

Noircarmes set up an imitation Blood-Council, and proceeded to disregard 
the promise of free exit to rebels and heretics, and safety to the rest. Every one 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 535 

who had anything to do with the late resistance, or with the Calvinist services 
was put to death : those who rejected the offices of priests were burned The 
old horrors were re-enacted, and all pleas for mercy spurned. A cobbler was 

alnT Mir 1SS0UP ? * ***** ^ °^ P"*« fo '' taking Protestant 
alms Mere suspicion of unsound opinions was enough ; when this failed 
wealth was a ground for condemnation, A Catholic gentleman who lived in' 
France was kidnapped and beheaded, that his estate near Mons might be con- 




THE TOWN HALT, HARLEM. 

fiscated, for not having communed at Easter and having twice heard the preach- 
ers out of curiosity. The Blood-Councillors complained that Noircannes took 
nearly all the plunder, though they had helped him get it by sentencing so 
many of their relatives and friends. The executions went on for uearl V a year 



536 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

sometimes twenty in a day. Mons had been one of the richest cities in the 
provinces, and famous for its manufactures ; all that was at an end. Its fate 
'was that which many other towns had already endured, or were yet to endure. 

SACK OF MECHLIN. 

The tyrant's wrath fell next upon Mechlin, whose wealth afforded the easiest 
•way of paying the arrears due his troops. When it submitted to Orange, Alva 
wrote to Philip, "This is a direct permission of God for us to punish her as she 
deserves for the image-breaking and other misdeeds done there in the time of 
Madame de Parma, which our Lord was not willing to leave unchastised" The 
city was the seat of an archbishop and contained few dissenters, but that did not 
matter at a pinch. The garrison fired two or three shots and fled. A procession 
of priests and citizens came out to implore mercy, but in vain. Mechlin was 
given up for three days to the soldiers — one each for Spaniards, Germans, and 
Walloons. A Catholic councillor wrote that his hair stood on end at remember- 
ing the scene. When it was over, those who survived might better have been 
dead. Beds were pulled from beneath the dying to see if they concealed money 
or plate : " Hardly a nail was left sticking in the walls." The murders and rav- 
ishings were past counting. As for the churches, no image-breakers or Beggars 
of the Sea could have spoiled them more thoroughly. The worst outrages of the 
Valenciennes mob, of Antwerp bigots and reckless Zealauders, were tame and 
puny compared with what was done by soldiers of the most Catholic King, with 
the full allowance if not at the express command of his zealous viceroy. Alva's 
son Don Frederic was there with Noircarmes, and men less savage than they 
appealed to them in vain to stop the promiscuous destruction. Turks who had 
stormed a Christian city, or Attila's heathen hordes descending upon Rome, 
could hardly have wrought more mischief. When all was over, Alva wrote to 
Philip to congratulate him on so fine a deed. Since this was the Spanish idea 
of governing, no wonder Spain sank so rapidly from her proud pre-eminence 
among the nations of the earth. 

FATE OF ZUTPHEN. 

It was ordained, in the mysteries of Providence, that as the spring and early 
summer of this year 1572 were to be marked by most unexpected and amazing suc- 
cesses for the cause of liberty, so its latter half should be filled with cruel dis- 
appointments and reverses. From Hainault and Brabant the blood-stained 
conquerors turned to the north and east. Zutphen, the capital of Gelderland, 
was one of the many cities which had declared for Orange. Alva sent his son 
against it, with orders to burn the town and leave not a man alive. It was 
easily and punctually done. When the troops were tired of slashing and hang- 
ing, five hundred citizens were tied in couples and thrown into the river. Some 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 537 

who were caught last were hung up by the feet and left to perish. The women had 
occasion to envy their murdered husbands, brothers, and fathers. A relative wrote 
to Louis of Nassau, "A wail of agony was heard above Zutphen last Sunday — a 
sound as of a mighty massacre ; but we know not what has taken place." 

Zeraerts, who held Walcheren for the prince, after failing in several enter- 
prises, had laid siege to Tergoes in South Beveland at the end of August. The 
Spaniards in vain attempted to reach and relieve the place, till a Flemish officer 
led them in a feat worthy of the boldest Zealander. A channel, ten English miles 
in length, had been formed by an irruption of the sea fifty years before^ between 
the island and the main land. A narrow causeway, four or five feet under water 
at low tide, and cut in three places, afforded a doubtful and laborious passage. 
Across this three thousand picked men under Mondragon made their way by 
night, two abreast or in Indian file, slipping, scrambling, at times swimming. 
The terrible journey was accomplished in five hours, between tide and tide, and 
with the loss of but nine men : it was a wonderful exploit, worthy of the bravest 
defenders of liberty instead of its destroyers. After a few hours' rest on the 
shore, they began a march of twelve miles further to Tergoes. Their arrival 
by this seemingly impossible means struck terror iuto the besiegers, who were 
more numerous than they. Zeraerts in vain tried to rally his men ; they fled to 
their ships, chased by the enemy, who cut off their rearguard. 

DESTRUCTION OF NAARDEN. 

The fate of Mons, Mechlin, and Zutphen struck terror through the country. 
Friesland, Overyssel, and Gelderland returned to their allegiance. Van den 
Bergh, a brother-in-law of Orange, fled like a coward from Campen, which he 
had promised to hold to the last, leaving his sick wife behind. Only Holland 
and part of Zealand remained faithful, and Don Frederic was seut to Amsterdam 
to stamp out the last embers of rebellion. It was not to prove so easy a task as 
he probably imagined. More horrors were to be enacted, more rivers of blood to 
flow, other cities to be ruined, before the tide should turn again toward liberty. 

Naarden was a small town on the south coast of the Zuyder Zee. Its sur- 
render was demanded on November 2 2d, by a company of horse. The citizens 
refused, and a single gun was fired, without authority, by a half-witted fellow. 
The burghers sent to Sonoy for aid, but none was to be had. Being in no condi- 
tion to defend the place, they sent deputies to treat with Don Frederic, but he 
would not receive them, and they were told to return with the army. The burg- 
omaster escaped by the way ; his companion went on, and entertained Romero 
and his officers at dinner, after receiving a promise that neither life nor prop- 
erty should be injured. The keys had been given up on that condition; but 
throughout these one-sided wars the Spaniards seemed anxious to make a repu- 
tation for treachery no less devilish than their cruelty. Five hundred citizens 




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THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 539 

were assembled in a church : the soldiers were suddenly let loose upon them, 
and the building fired. The massacre extended throughout the town. The 
butchers tortured their unresisting victims with sword and lance, opened their 
veins, and literally drank their blood. A rich and prominent man had his feet 
roasted till he paid a large ransom for his life, and then was hanged by special 
order of Don Frederic. Some who escaped from the town were chased into the 
fields, stripped, and hung by the feet to freeze. Most. of the houses were burned, 
and what remained, with the walls, were soon after pulled down. Alva, with his 
usual blasphemy, wrote to the king that it was by God's appointment that these 
people were foolish enough to attempt the defense of a place that was not defen- 
sible ; and Mendoza, the Spanish historian, who took part in these wars, thought 
that "the sack of Naarden was a chastisement which must be believed to have 
taken place by express permission of divine Providence," because it was an earl}' 
seat of Protestantism. 

A moderate success, won on their own element, did something to revive the 
sinking hopes of the Hollanders at this juncture. Some of their vessels were 
frozen in near Amsterdam, and attacked by a picked force; but the Beggars, 
more skilful on the ice than their enemies, drove them off with heavy loss, and 
a thaw the next day enabled the ships to escape. Alva, who was now at Amster- 
dam, was much surprised at this " skirmish on the frozen sea." He sent for 
seven thousand pairs of skates, and trained his men to use them. 

SIEGE OF HARLEM. 

Harlem, then as now an important town, was the next punt of attack. Its 
capture would cut off the peninsula of North. Holland, held by Sonoy, from the 
main province, where Orange was doing Avhat he could to concert measures of 
defense. Three of the magistrates went pnvately to treat with Alva. Two of 
them returned, and were tried and executed. The burgomaster, who prudently 
remained at Amsterdam, wrote home advising the citizens to surrender; his 
messenger was hanged. Though the city had but weak walls and a small gar- 
rison, its commander, Riperda, roused the spirit of the burghers ; the cowardly 
or traitorous magistrates were displaced by others who could be trusted, and 
every possible measure was taken for defense. 

Water was to enter largely into these operations. To the west, five miles of 
sand lay between the walls and the ocean. A shallow lake, dangerous in storms, 
separated Harlem from Amsterdam, ten miles east, and was traversed by a nar- 
row causeway. One arm of this lake carried the waters of the Zuydeir Zee to 
the northwest ; another, called the Mere, extended far southward. On December 
nth, Don Frederic, having stormed the neighboring fort of Sparendam, began 
to invest the city: in a short time thirty thousand men, a force nearly equal to its 
entire population, were encamped around it. Continual fogs and mists from the 



54o THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

frozen lake concealed the doings of each party from the other, and enabled 
Orange to introduce provisions, munitions of war, and reinforcements, till the 
garrison numbered about four thousand. Besides these there were three hun- 
dred women, regularly enrolled and armed, who did as good service as the men ; 
they were reputable characters, and led by a widow of high family and standing. 

A relieving force under La Marck, in numbers nearly equal to the garrison, 
was not fortunate enough to reach the city. A thousand of them fell in a fierce 
battle, and many were taken and hanged on high gibbets in the Spanish camp. 
La Marck sent to offer a ransom and nineteen prisoners in exchange for one of 
his officers : it was in vain. The officer was suspended by one leg and left to 
die, and La Marck hanged his captives in return. 

The cannonading began on December 18th. In three days two thousand 
solid shots were hurled against the walls, to their great injury. But the people, 
women and children as well as men, labored by day and night, bringing sand, 
earth, and stone, to repair the breaches. They did not scruple to use the statues 
from the churches : this the besiegers thought shocking sacrilege. Human life, 
the rights of men, the chastity of women, had no value in their eyes; but 
images of the saints were too precious to be touched — except when these 
devotees were sacking a town. 

Alva's son, expecting to finish the business in a week, ordered an assault on 
December 21st. It was fiercely repelled, with a loss of but three or four to the 
defenders, and as many hundred to the enemy: Romero lost an eye. Against 
this defeat the Spaniards soon had a victory to record. Batenburg, who had 
taken La Marck's place as admiral, was sent with two thousand men, seven can- 
non, and a quantity of supplies. He lost his way in the fog, all that he brought 
fell to the enemy, and his troops were slain or scattered. His lieutenant's head 
was thrown into the town with a mocking message : the besieged retorted with 
eleven heads of prisoners, and a line saying that they were for Alva in payment 
of the ten per cent, tax, with one over for interest. These beheadings were in 
grim jest : prisoners on either side were usually hanged. 

HEROIC DEFENSE OF HARLEM. 

After the first assault, mining and countermining began. Sappers would 
cross each other's underground paths, and fight in the dark, with scarcely stand- 
ing-room. Explosions were frequent. "A shower of heads, limbs, mutilated 
trunks, the mangled remains of hundreds of human beings, often spouted from 
the earth as if from an invisible volcano." Thus the winter passed, with con- 
stant labor and frequent loss, with battering and mending of walls, with mines 
and sallies, with steady courage and unflagging zeal. Seeing that the ravelin 
at the Cross-gate could not long be held, the men of Harlem, unknown to their 
foes, built a half-moon inside it. On January 28th they were gladdened by the 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



54i 



arrival of what they needed most, bread and powder. A hundred and seventy 
sledge-loads had been brought safely across the lake by four hundred patriots. 

Three days later a midnight attack was made, and had almost succeeded; 
but the sentinels were brave, the bells were rung, the burghers rushed from their 
beds to the walls, and the expected massacre was postponed. At daylight of 
February 1st came a general assault. It was strongest at the weakest point. 
The wall by the Cross Gate gave way, the Spaniards entered with shouts of tri- 
umph — to find a solid mass of masonry confronting them, cannon openiug upon 




HARLEM. 

them from its top, and the ravelin blown up beneath them. Three hundred fell, 
and the rest retired. 

After this second repulse, Don Frederic sent Mendoza to his father for per- 
mission to raise the siege. Alva refused it with threats, though thousands of his 
men were dying. The besiegers suffered from the severe winter, and both sides 
from lack of food. The men of Harlem, growing desperate, welcomed the 
attacks of their foes, and in the intervals made their own. Once, in a heavy fog, 



542 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

a party crept up to the largest Spanish battery and tried to spike the guns. 
Later, on March 25th, a thousand of them drove in the outposts, burned three 
hundred tents, killed nearly their own number with a loss of only four, and 
actually dragged into their gates seven cannon and many wagons of provisions, 
besides niue standards. The gentlest natures became heroic, the tenderest hearts 
rejoiced to shed the blood of their oppressors. Madame Hasselaer and her ama- 
zons bore their part in almost every fight. Curey, who at first loved peace and 
hated arms, made himself a brilliant soldier, headed every forlorn hope, disdained 
helmet, corslet, and shield, and with his naked sword slew very many Spaniards. 
After each of these feats a reaction would come, and he lay sick for days, loath- 
ing such bloody deeds. Then he would rise and go forth to fight again like a 
madman. 

A MODERN HORATIUS. 

Alva, who had been familiar with battles and sieges from his childhood, 
wrote to Philip that "never was a place defended with such skill and bravery as 
Harlem, " and that "such a war had never before been seen or heard of." Yet 
all this valor could only defer an end that was inevitable, unless the patriots 
could hold the lake before Harlem, or cut the dyke and starve out Amsterdam ; 
of this the viceroy had his fears. Winter had helped the defenders of their 
country ; but the ice broke up early in March, and Bossu brought some vessels 
near the city. Orange sent Sonoy to cut one of the dykes, but his men were 
driven off after a sharp water-fight, which was made illustrious by an exploit as 
heroic as that of the Roman Horatius at the bridge. When all his comrades 
fled, John Haring of Horn, alone with his sword and shield, held the narrowest 
part of the causeway against a thousand foes, and than swam off safe. Oliver, 
the painter and conspirator of Mons, was among the slain in this affair. His 
head was thrown into Harlem, and the prisoners were hanged as usual by the 
neck or heels, in view of their beleaguered friends, who took such vengeance as 
they could. As Mendoza wrote, every man in and about Harlem " seemed in- 
spired by a spirit of special and personal vengeance." Whence the inspiration 
came did not occur to him, though the cause of it was not far to seek. 

Meantime Orange had been moving heaven and earth to get reinforcements 
— from Holland, Germany, France, England, anywhere. With a force at all 
proportioned to that of his enemies, he might have held his own or more ; but it 
was still a struggle of a few against many, of feeble Right against lawless and 
ruthless Might. He had gathered a hundred vessels or more, of one sort or 
another, under Brand and Batenburg; Bossu had fewer, but they were larger, 
and the Spaniards were by this time at home on the inland waters. On May 
28th the control of the lake was disputed in a long, fierce, and destructive battle, 
and the patriots lost it. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



543 



Harlem was now doomed. Its provisions were giving out, its outer forts had 
fallen, its source of supply was closed. The citizens sent word to Orange that 
they could hold out but three weeks longer, and begged for speedy help. His 
carrier-doves bore them an encouraging reply. Through June they lived on 
seeds, hides, and grass, and many died of starvation. The prince recanted nearly 
five thousand volunteers, solid burghers of Delft, Rotterdam, Gouda, and other 
towns. He wished to lead them himself, but the cities objected; his life was of 
more value than even Harlem, and must not be exposed. So he gave up the 




DRESS OF ZEALAND WOMEN. 

command to the unlucky Batenburg, who left Gassenheim on the evening of 
July 8th, with seven cannon and four hundred wagons full of provisions. With 
these he hoped to enter and relieve the city, eluding the vigilance of the Span- 
iards ; but they were fully informed of his plans. Two of the prince's pigeons 
had been shot, and the letters they were carrying to the besieged revealed all. 
The fullest preparations were made ; the smoke from a mass of brush prevented 
the patriot signals from being seen, and concealed the dispositions of the foe. 



544 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



As Batenburg approached the city from the south, he was surrounded and slain 
with many of his men; the rest were taken or dispersed. A prisoner, with his 
nose and ears cut off, was sent within the walls to tell the news. 

The burghers had already asked for terms, but none were granted. In their 
despair it was proposed that all the able-bodied men march out together and cut 

their way through 
the Spanish camp 
or die in the at- 
tempt. The tears 
of their wives and 
children changed 
this wild resolve 
to a yet more hope- 
less plan; they 
would form a 
square around 
their families, en- 
closing the help- 
less, the aged, and 
the sick, and thus 
go forth to perish 
sword in hand. Buti 
by this time Alva's 
som who had lately 
scorned their pro- 
posal, began to fear 
that these desper- 
ate men might 
burn the town and 
die in its ruins by 
their own hands, 
leaving little glory 
for him and no 
pleasure or plunder 
for his troops. So 
he resorted to the 
usual Spanish 
policy of lying, 

and sent a promise of free forgiveness and full security if the gates were opened 
at once. His father's orders and his own purpose, of course, were of another 
complexion. 




ORGAN IN THE GREAT CHURCH, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 545 

FATE OF HARLEM. 

The city surrendered on July 12th. The atrocities which followed were not 
so frightful as at Mechlin, Zutphen, and Naarden. Strange to say, the town was 
neither burned nor sacked; the latter privilege was commuted for a large sum to 
be paid in four instalments. Not all the survivors were murdered ; Alva gave 
the number as twenty-three hundred, the native historians put it somewhat lower. 
The garrison, which had been greatly reduced, furnished half of these victims,' 
though six hundred Germans in it were let go. The officers were the first to 
suffer— or such of them as had not killed themselves. Among them was a nat- 
ural son of Cardinal Granvelle, who had no sympathy with his father's politics 
and one of the noble family of Brederode. A case of Damon and Pythias mag- 
nanimity occurred here : one young Hasselaer had been arrested for another, and 
was going with closed lips to the scaffold, when his cousin gave himself up' and 
insisted that he was the one to die. The miscellaneous slaughter did not begin 
till the third day, after a visit from Alva; and the story of it is tame, compared 
with that of the atrocities in other places. 

The siege of Harlem was an expensive affair. It lasted seven months, dur- 
ing which twelve thousand of those engaged in it died of disease or wounds, and 
over ten thousand shots were discharged against the walls. To the inflamed eye 
of loyalty, all this outpouring of blood and iron was a good investment, since 
the news of the capture cured the king of a dangerous fever; but it would have 
been much better for the world if he had died then. He was to live twenty- 
five years longer, and do a great deal more mischief. In the five vears of 
this war, on his side utterly foolish and wicked, on that of Orange and h's 
friends necessary, because forced on their manhood by intolerable oppression, 
twenty-five million florins had been sent from Spain to carry it on. besides prob- 
ably as much more raised by confiscation and Alva's patent taxes. As yet the 
conflict was only begun. It was to go on for a long and weary time, to the per- 
manent ruin of Spain, the temporary destruction of the southern provinces the 
upbuilding of a free state in the north, and the everlasting instruction of such 
nations as are able to learn anything from history. 




CHAPTER XXXV. 



ALKMAAR, MOOK, AND LEYDEN. 



HE process of taking the revolted cities one by one 
was likely to be tedious, since Harlem, one of the 
weakest in defenses, had been able to hold out for 
seven months. Accordingly Alva sent out a letter 
inviting all to return to their allegiance and taste 
Philip's parental clemency, rather than "wait for 
his rage, cruelty, and fury, and the approach of 
his army." He added a warning that if they per- 
sisted in rebellion the king would "utterly depopu- 
late the land, and cause it to be inhabited by 
strangers ; since otherwise he could not believe 
that the will of God and of his majesty had been 
accomplished." This proclamation had no effect. 
The Hollanders, thinking themselves better judges 
than Alva of the divine will, were resolved to dare 
and bear all for liberty. 

The Spanish troops, not having been paid in 
full, now broke out in a mutiny, the first of many. 
Besides terribly afflicting the natives at Harlem 
they gave the viceroy a great deal of trouble. Some of them 
offered, for a large sum, to hand over Harlem to Orange, but he. could not raise 
the money. 

The small town of Alkmaar, in North Holland, had refused to surrender. 
By the end of August, 1573, it was surrounded by sixteen thousand soldiers, 
and so closely beset that, as Alva claimed, a sparrow could not get in or out. He 
wrote to his master that, if he took it, he was resolved "not to leave a single 
creature alive : the knife shall be put to every throat. Since the example of 
Harlem has proved of no use, perhaps an example of cruelty will bring the 
other cities to their senses." He would much prefer to be lenient, he said; 
nobody liked mercy better than he ; but it was of no use with such obstinate 
heretics and traitors The only way to deal with them was to exterminate them, 
or near it. But in this case his savage purpose was to be baffled. 
(546) 




and elsewhere, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



547 



ALKMAAR SAVED. 

Alkmaar had a garrison of eight hundred, and thirteen hundred citizens 
able to fight. On September 18th it was cannonaded till three o'clock, and then 
assaulted in force on both sides, two fresh regiments from Italy leading. They 
were received with showers of pitch, lime, melted lead, boiling water, and oil. 
Hoops covered with tar were set on fire and thrown over their shoulders as they 
mounted to the attack. Every citizen was on the walls ; the women and children 
brought powder and shot, or stood by to help. Such of the assailants as gained 
a footing were met with cold steel and thrown down headlong. One of the few 
who lived to tell what he had seen, remembered only plain people inside, mostly 




-"; — ~ ■■ - 



THE WEIGH HOUSE, ALKMAAR. 

in fishermen's dress. For four hours the fight was kept up with desperate 
valor. Only thirty-seven of the defenders fell ; but when the Spaniards drew 
off at dark, they left at least a thousand dead. Don Frederic ordered a renewal 
of the assault next day, but his men positively refused, though some of them 
were killed by their officers. The besieged had taken one prisoner : after telling 
all he knew, he offered to ''worship the devil as they did," if they would spare 
his life. 

Alkmaar could not hold out forever, and the only way to save it was t<> open 
the sluices and cut the dykes. As this would not merely drown out or drive off 
the Spaniards, but inundate the whole province and destroy much property, the 



548 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

consent of friends at some distance was needed. A brave carpenter, Van der 
Mey, went forth at the imminent peril of his life with letters to Orange, Sonoy, 
and others, concealed in a hollow cane. He accomplished his mission and 
returned,, after some of the dykes had been opened, with orders and promises to 
complete the work; but when near the city he was so closely pursued that he 
lost his staff. The letters in it disclosed the plan to flood the region. Alva's 
son hastily called a council of war, which agreed that discretion was here the 
better part of valor. The s'ege was raised October 8th, and Alkmaar delivered 
without the desperate expedient on which the patriot leaders had determined. 

Meantime Loais of Nassau had been conducting negotiations in France, 
with at least the effect of weakening the dangerous alliance of that court with 
Philip. The business of St. Bartholomew, as he plainly told Charles IX., had 
delighted "the Spaniard, your mortal enemy, and enabled him to weaken your 
majesty more than he could have done by a war of thirty years." The blood- 
stained king, his ministers, and even his mother, were somewhat abashed by the 
indignation which the massacre had aroused. The Huguenots, as we have seen, 
though weakened, were not exterminated, nor was their spirit broken. Catherine 
de Medicis, in some dealings with their deputies, asked if a king's word was not 
enough, and was sharply answered, "Xo, madam; by St. Bartholomew, no! n 
Holland sorely needed foreign aid, and Schomberg said that Nassau's plan of a 
French protectorate was "grand and beautiful." France wanted he]p to secure 
the Polish crown, and it was not so clear then as it afterwards became that her 
weak and perjured princes could be of little service to Dutch liberty. The only 
things to admire in this tedious diplomacy are the manly frankness of Louis. 
and the steady patience of his great brother. "I have more than I can carry,'* 
Orange wrote, "and in the weight of these great affairs, financial, military, polit- 
ical, there is none to help me." In a published letter to Philip and other docu- 
ments he set forth, as he had done before, the facts and the principles underlying 
them, announced the resolution of the cities of Holland to stand to the last 
against Alva's tyranny, and appealed to the judgment and sympathy of 
Christendom. 

tWO NAVAL VICTORIES. 

On October nth, three days after the siege of Alkmaar was raised, the 
patriots were gladdened by a naval victory. Bossu, who had thirty vessels on 
the Zuyder Zee, was attacked by twenty-five smaller ones under Dirkzoon. The 
Spaniards fled, were chased by most of the Dutch, and lost five ships. Only the 
admiral, in his great vessel "The Inquisition," maintained the fight. Three of 
the small craft grappled her, and a savage conflict went on from three P. M. till 
the next day, with heavy loss on both sides. The ships, locked together, drifted 
about and went aground. With the first light of morning John Haring, the 
iero of the Diemer Dyke, hauled down the enemy's flag, and was killed in the 




549 



550 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

act. The Spaniards held their own a few hours longer, but they were far from 
help, and boats came from the shore to reinforce the Hollanders. At eleven 
Bossu surrendered with three hundred of his men. His capture saved the head 
of Saint Aldegonde, who was taken soon after in a skirmish at Maas. Orange 
sent Alva word that life would be taken for life, and they were finally exchanged. 

Another prisoner of rank fell a victim to the last of Alva's hideous cruelties. 
Less as a heretic than as one of the captors of Brill, Uitenhoove was roasted at 
a slow fire, and the viceroy was angry at the executioner for ending his torments 
with a spear-thrust. Sufferers of another sort were soon left to mourn that they 
had trusted the governor. Requesens, the Grand Commander of St Jago, came 
to succeed him on November 17th, and a month later Alva departed under a load 
of general execration. His debts were enormous, and he had no means of pay- 
ing them ; so he sent a trumpeter through Amsterdam to announce that all 
claims should be presented on a certain day, and in the night before sneaked off, 
leaving his creditors to be ruined. He got safely back to Spain, despite his fears 
of being shot from a window on the way, and lived nine years longer, most of 
the time in disgrace with the master he had served too well. 

The new governor was an average Spaniard of moderate ability and reputa- 
tion. He pretended to believe that religion had little to do with the rebellion. 
but favored Alva's policy of extermination. The finances were in a ruinous 
condition, and everybody else, even the Spaniards and native butchers like 
Noircarmes, desired peace ; but the king and his representative meant to have 
the war go on. A show of milder intentions was made, but only to deceive the 
patriots and divide their counsels, as Orange knew full well. Saint Aldegonde, 
still in danger and tired of captivity, advised submission and emigration ; but 
stouter hearts disdained the idea of abandoning the sacred cause. 

Mondragon, the old Spanish colonel who led the famous march through the 
sea to relieve Tergoes, was now closely besieged at Middleburg in the Isle of 
Walcheren. Two fleets, with over a hundred vessels under Romero and d'Avila, 
were gathered at Bergen-op Zoom and Antwerp to relieve him and provision the 
town. The governor stood on the dyke to see them off, and in saluting him one 
of the ships blew up. The patriot fleet, commanded by Boisot, was ready to 
oppose their progress. Orange had roused the enthusiasm of his officers, and 
received their promises to live and die for their country. The action occurred 
on January 29th, 1574. Schot, the captain of the flag-ship, came on board nearly 
dead of a fever, and insisted that his men, instead of going below to avoid the 
first fire, should stay on deck, ready to grapple and board the enemy. 

The Spanish guns were discharged but once. Schot and his lieutenant fell ; 
the admiral lost an eye. Then the grappling-irons and pikes did their work. 
The Sea Beggars gave no more quarter than their foes. When twelve hundred 
of the king's men had been killed and fifteen of his ships taken, the rest 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



55i 



retreated. Romero's vessel ran aground and he swam to shore, remarking to 
the viceroy, who was still on the dyke, "I told you I was not a sailor. If I had 
a hundred fleets, I could do no better." 

Mondragon, though nearly starved, swore to burn Middleburg if not granted 




INTERIOR OF A HOUSE IN ALKMAAR. 



terms. They were allowed, and he marched out on February 21st with honors 
of war, promising to secure the release of five prisoners of rank, or return in 
their place. But Requesens would not let him keep his word. 



552 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

LAST CAMPAIGN OF LOUIS OF NASSAU. 

The patriots now held all Walcheren and practically the whole coast. They 
had proved their superiority at sea, and their heroism in defending cities ; bnt in 
an ordinary land battle they were no match for the Spaniards ; they had the 
valor, but not the discipline and experience for that. The relief of Leyden was 
now their first concern, but was to be effected by foreign aid. It had been in- 
vested by Valdez at the end of October; the siege was raised on March 21st, 
when all available troops were marched eastward to repel an invading force. 

Louis of Nassau, after receiving profuse promises from Anjou and Aleneon, 
had raised an army in Germany, with the help of his brother John. He was 
highly esteemed through Europe; the victory of the Holy Lion and the capture 
of Mons had given him a military reputation perhaps higher than he deserved. 
The plan of his campaign had been arranged by Orange, who considered it "the 
only certain means for putting a speedy end to the war, and driving these devils 
of Spaniards out of the country, before the Duke of Alva has time to raise 
another army to support them." Louis was to take Maestricht if possible, then 
cross Limburg and Brabant, and join the prince, who had six thousand infantry 
in the isle of Bommel. 

The plan was not destined to succeed. The river was impassible, and Mem 
doza and Avila reached Maestricht before Nassau could cross it. On March 
1 8th a night attack cut off seven hundred of his men, with a loss to the assail- 
ants of but seven. Others deserted, and on April 8th he moved northward. 
Avila kept pace with him, on the other side of the Meuse, to prevent his junction 
with his brother. The superstition of the country anticipated his doom. Early 
in February five men of Utrecht had sworn before the magistrates that they had 
seen a phantom battle in the sky by night. An army from the northwest, after 
giving way at the first onset of one from the opposite direction, had rallied and 
annihilated its opponents. The vision disappeared in clouds, and presently the 
heavens seemed to flow with blood. This account was widely circulated, and 
when the relative positions of Louis and Avila were known, men looked on the 
result as known beforehand. 

SLAUGHTER AT MOOK. 

The real battle took place at Mook, near the border of Cleves, on April 
14th, 1574. The German mercenaries were in mutiny, howling for their pay as 
usual, and little likely to stand against an equal force of Spaniards ; but Louis 
could not retreat with honor, or thought he could not. Avila had crossed the 
Meuse from the west, and chosen a strong position. He had five thousand men 
against Nassau's eight thousand; Valdez would arrive the next day with as 
many more, but the Spaniard would not wait to divide the honors of victory. 
After several hours of skirmishing, the village became the bone of contention ; 
each side advanced and receded in attack and counter-attack. Nassau with his 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



553 



cavalry drove a portion of the enemy in utter rout; the rest stood firm, and after 
a bloody action overthrew the Germans. Louis, with his brother Henry, led a 
last hopeless charge, and perished. His army was annihilated, and full four 
thousand slain in the fight and the pursuit, smothered in the marshes, 




BATTUE OF MOOK. 



drowned in the river, or burned in the houses near. The count's bod}', with that 
of Henry Nassau and Christopher, Duke of the Palatinate, was never recognized, 
nor the particulars of their fate known. They went down in a furious melee ; 
the faces of the dead were trampled out of human semblance, and their bodies 
stripped of all that could identify them. A dark rumor went abroad that the 



554 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

general had dragged himself from among the slain and to the river bank, where 
he was murdered by some prowling countrymen ; but no evidence was offered to 
support the tale. Thus, in the crash of ruinous defeat, obscurely yet not inglo- 
riously, ended the earthly career of a gallant soldier, an accomplished and high- 
minded gentleman, an unselfish and devoted servant of his country and of 
human rights. He was admired and v beloved by all except those who hated 
liberty; in him Orange lost his strongest support, his most precious helper. 
Three of his mother's sons had now laid down their lives in the battles of free- 
dom: no family, in any age or land, ever did or suffered more for that sacred 
cause than the house of Nassau. Duke Christopher, who died with Louis and 
Henry, was another youth of promise. His father, the Elector Palatine, said, 
"It was better so than to have wasted his time in idleness.'" Count John of 
Nassau had fortunately been sent to Cologne two days before to raise money for 
the troops. 

A MUTINY AND A BATTLE. 

The Spanish troops, to whom three years 1 pay was due, mutinied the day 
after their victory. Throwing off all authority not of their own appointment, 
they chose a governor and councillors, and submitted to a discipline quite as 
strict, it must be owned, as Alva had ever enforced. They marched to Antwerp, 
took possession of it on April 26th, quartered themselves upon the richest citi- 
zens, and lived on the fat of the land. Champagny, who had command there, 
sent for the viceroy and barricaded himself in a strong house. Requesens 
endeavored to recall the soldiers to their obedience ; they answered that they 
wanted dollars and not speeches. He asked the magistrates for four hundred 
thousand crowns. They demurred, but after two weeks of this expensive hos- 
pitality offered part payment. The chief officer or "Eletto" of the mutineers 
urged his comrades to accept the terms, since each of them, so to speak, had a 
, rope round his neck ; they deposed him and elected another. A similar mutiny 
broke out in the very citadel, but was soon suppressed, after its ringleaders had 
been cut down by a Spanish ensign, who would have been murdered if he had 
not gone into hiding. A few weeks later the town-council furnished the required 
sum, pait in cash and part in goods, and received the governor's bond, which 
was not of much value. The delighted soldiers arrayed themselves in fine clotb, 
brocades, satins, and silks, and sat down to gamble away their hard-won gains. 
Their festivkies were interrupted by the sound of heavy guns down the river. 
The revellers rushed to arms and hurried to the dykes, but too late to disturb the 
sport of the Beggars. Admiral Boisot, desirous of adding to the laurels he had 
won at Bergen four months earlier, had come up the Scheld, encountered the 
Antwerp fleet of twenty-two vessels, destroyed fourteen of them with their crew;?, 
and made a prisoner of the royalist Vice-Admiral Haemstede. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 555 

SIEGE OF LEYDEN. 

Leyden was, as it still is, a fine city, near the head of the Harlem mere. Its 
inhabitants, after standing a siege throughout the winter, ought to have profited 
by the temporary absence of their enemies to lay in provisions and increase their 
garrison. They imprudently neglected to do this, relying on the success of Nas- 
sau's expedition. By the end of May they were again invested by Valdez with 
eight thousand men, while they had hardly any but volunteer troops. As else- 
where in Holland, the burghers were excellent at defending their own, and the 
commandant, Van der Does, was a man of rank, ability, accomplishments, and 
proved courage. 

On June 6th Requesens proclaimed the king's pardon to all who would 
return to the Roman Church, a few persons excepted. Orange feared the effect 
of this, but it had none. Holland and Zealand were now the only provinces in 
rebellion, and their population was almost solidly Calvinist. The prince had 
passed from his intermediate state of Lutheranism, and become one in profession 
with his fellow-patriots. These people were to be moved neither from their faith 
nor from their resolutions. Only two men, so far as known, came forward to 
claim the doubtful benefits of the pardon. 

Leyden put a price on Spanish heads, and many were brought in. Sallies 
and combats before the gates were at first so frequent and active that it was soon 
found best to forbid them, that the small number of fighting men might be pre- 
served for future emergencies. The besiegers attempted no assaults, having had 
enough of these at Alkmaar, but relied on starvation, varied with persuasion of 
a new kind. On July 30th Valdez urged the burghers to submit and accept the 
pardon. They refused, though food was now scarce among them. 

As the sharp tooth of hunger began to be felt, the citizens, accustomed to 
good living, became impatient, and frequented an ancient ruined tower in the 
centre of the town, whence they could look far and wide to see if help was com- 
ing. It could come, as all knew, but from one source — the sea. Some lx^alists, 
who had been alloyed to remain unmolested, taunted their neighbors with what 
seemed a vain hope. "Go up to the tower," they said, "and tell us if the ocean 
is coming over the dry land ; " for some miles of low and rich meadows inter- 
vened between the city and the mere. On August 21st word was sent to the 
prince, by the carrier doves which alone could go in and out, that the besieged 
had been a month almost without food, and could not hold out much longer. On 
the 27th they wrote to the Estates, complaining that they were deserted in their 
need. A prompt reply assured them that Holland stood or fell with Leyden : 
the waves should destroy all, before she should be forsaken. 

THE DYKES CUT. 

The hope of the watchers was not vain : the means of relief, though difficult 
and expensive, were not impossible. Through the Polderwaert fort, between 



556 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Rotterdam and Delft, Orange controlled the open country, or at least the means 
of making it untenable. The Spaniards had attacked this place on June 29th, and 
been repelled with loss. In July his plans were perfected, and the Estates brought 
to agree to them. " Better a drowned land than a lost land," became a motto. 
Subscriptions were taken and a fund raised, as for a work of construction rather 
than destruction ; ladies gave their jewels and plate to ruin the fields and expel 
the foe. Early in August the cutting of the dykes began, and the waters came 
slowly in. Two hundred vessels were loaded with provisions. A most untimely 
fever, brought on by undue mental labor and anxiety, laid the prince on his bed, 




NORTH HOLLAND DYKES. 



and proved both tedious and dangerous. No one could take his place, and the 
work was unavoidably delayed. 

Valdez, alarmed at these proceedings, consulted his native allies, who said 
the country could not be flooded: they meant that it had not been done before 
by human hands. Had the general been better advised, he might have put more 
difficulties in the way of the patriots, whose task was hard at best. 

At length the flotilla was put in motion on an artificial sea. The boats were 
defended by twenty-five hundred fighting men, one-third of them wild Zealanders, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 557 

sworn to give no quarter, and wearing 01 their caps a crescent, with the 
motto, " Rather Turk than Pope." Admiral Boisot had brought these from their 
native islands, and now took command cf the expedition. The distance, not 
great in itself, was multiplied by obstacles. Five miles from Leydeu was the 
Land-scheiding, a strong dyke eighteen inches above water. This was taken on 
the night of September 10th, and its few guards killed or driven away. With 
the first light the Spaniards attacked in force, but were routed with heavy loss. 
A Sea Beggar cut out the heart of one whom he had killed, bit it, and then 
ihrew it to a dog, saying, "Too bitter." The mangled heart was picked up and 
preserved as a curiosity, or rather as an illustration of the savage hatred felt 
toward the foreign persecutors. 

The dyke was ciit through, the fleet passed on : within a mile was another, 
no better guarded than the first. Beyond it the sea became too shallow : the way 
led through a canal lined by the enemy, who also held a bridge across it. Boisot 
attacked them fiercely, but found their position and their force too strong. The 
boats, drawing but eighteen or twenty inches, scraped upon the bottom and stood 
fast: a precious week went by. By the 19th the waters had risen enough for 
them to move again : they reached a third dyke, strongly guarded at each end, 
but the defenders fled. Two forts and villages were fired ; the relieving fleet and 
the alarmed Spaniards moved on toward Leydeu. At North Aa was yet another 
dyke, and but nine inches of water. Here Orange, barely able to leave his bed, 
visited the fleet and urged it on ; but the wind was wrong, and another week was 
lost. 

Meantime Leyden was really starving. The people saw the fires which 
hinted at coming help, but knew not what to make of this long delay. Pestilence 
came in the train of famine, and carried off some seven thousand. Valdez, who 
knew that his time was short, sent daily letters, promising everything if the 
gates were opened. Fainting wretches beset the burgomaster with entreaties 
and threats : he told them it was better to starve than trust the tender mercies 
of the wicked and fall by Spanish hands. His words put new courage into 
their hearts ; the citizens mounted the walls and exchanged taunts and defiance 
with the besiegers. 

RELIEF OF LEYDEN. 

On September 28th a pigeon brought an encouraging letter from the admi- 
ral, which raised their hopes; still, as Boisot wrote to Orange the next day, all 
depended on wind and tide. It was a belated equinoctial storm that saved Ley- 
den from per.shing. On the night of October 1st, on a sea that raged among 
fruit-trees and chimneys, by the light of their own cannon-flashes, the patriots 
destroyed the opposing vessels of Valdez, and drew near the city. As day dawned, 
two forts were deserted by their garrisons, who made haste 1o escape westward. 
The Zealanders leaped from -their boats and chased them through the rising 



ML 

Ml 

m 



mIIII 




MONUMENT AT ALKMAAR. 
Erected to commemorate the victory of 2, 100 Protestants against 16,000 soldiers, under the Duke of Alva. 



558 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 5i9 

waters; hundreds were slain or drowned. One obstacle remained: the fort of 
Lammen, directly between the fleet and the town, was firmly held by a Borgia, 
and could not be passed. Boisot, brave but prudent, anchored just out of range 
of its guns, and wrote to Orange that he would attack next day, but doubted 
the result. 

That evening the burgomaster and many citizens climbed Hengist's tower. 
"Behind that fort," he said, "are bread and meat, and thousands of our friends. 
Shall we help them ? " They agreed, weak and famished as they were, to attack 
Lammen the next morning. That night there was little sleep: the watchers 
on the towers and mast-heads saw lights moving from the fort over the water, 
and heard the ominous sound of a falling wall. Boisot's men feared that the 
city had been taken. They feared it more when, straining their eyes in the 
faint dawning, they could see no signs of life about the fort. No ; there was 
a boy, waving his cap from the battlements; and presently a man came wading 
to them from the shore. The boy had seen the Spanish retreat and been the 
first to prove it. The very giving way of a part of the wall, which laid the 
city open to its besiegers, had scared them off. Valdez had fled, from the shore, 
and Borgia from Lammen : not a living enemy remained in sight. 

Every creature who could move in Leyden hurried or crept to the wharves as 
the vessels entered the canals. Thousands of loaves were thrown on shore, and 
the starving wretches seized on this late relief so eagerly that some choked to 
death, and many were made sick, before arrangements could be carried out for 
distributing and administering the food, now too abundant. Magistrates, citizens, 
soldiers, sailors, went in long procession to the huge church, where prayers were 
said and a hymn of thanksgiving raised — but not sung through, for sobs and 
tears of joy checked the music. A letter was sent to Orange, and reached him 
the same afternoon, October 3d, in the church of Delft, where it was lead by 
the minister. The next day the prince, though by no means fully restored to 
health, visited Leyden, and witnessed, as if by providential ordering, the receding 
of the waters under a sharp northeast wind. In a few days the laud emerged, 
and those who had cut the dykes began to repair them. 

A noble memorial was reared to commemorate the ending of this famous 
siege. The university of Leyden, soon to become one of the foremost in the 
world, was opened and consecrated with great ceremony on February 5th, 1575. 
Thus, in the early stages of a fierce struggle for existence, did the heroic Hol- 
landers erect a temple at once to learning and to piety. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



MUTINY AND MASSACRE. 




"/> <: 



HE Spaniards were somewhat discouraged by their 
failure to take Leyden, and in the months which 
followed their military operations were compara- 
tively slack. Holland was glad of a breathing- 
space in which to repair some of the damage 
wrought by the waters and the Avar. Orange, not 
wholly satisfied with the conduct of the cities, 
offered to resign his post : the Estates refused to 
allow this, and in November, 1574, increased his 
powers. Sundry negotiations between the contend- 
ing parties, and an attempt at mediation by the 
Emperor Maximilian, have little of interest or im- 
portance. Ten commissioners, five on each side, 
met at Breda in March, 1575, and sat for over four 
months, but accomplished nothing. In April Hol- 
land and Zealand formed a closer union than before, 
and gave the prince absolute powers of defense, instructing him to protect the 
Reformed worship and suppress the exercise of the Roman religion. He struck 
out the last two words^ and put in their place " religions at variance with the 
Gospel," which left him free to judge and act. No power could force him into 
persecution ; and the provinces never asked him to inquire into men's personal 
beliefs. 

His second marriage had been far from happy. Anne of Saxony proved 
the reverse of what a wife ought to be. He obtained a divorce with scrip- 
tural warrant for it, and in June, 1575, espoused Charlotte of Bourbon, daughter 
of the Duke of Montpensier, who was active in the French Catholic league. 
The lady was far from sharing her father's sentiments ; she had been a nun, 
but from 1572 was a Protestant and lived at the court of the Elector Palatine, 
having been disowned by her family. This third marriage was much objected 
to. It was in the interest of William's private happiness, but not of any political 
ambitions : in fact, it estranged his German allies, and cut off help from them. 
About this time Sonoy, Governor of North Holland, disgraced his cause by 
committing horrible cruelties on certain persons accused of traitorous plans. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



56i 



Orange stopped the outrages as soon as he heard of them, but Sonoy was too 
powerful, .and had done too much good service, to be displaced as La March had 
been. As if to remind the world that the Spaniards claimed a monopoly of 
savageness, Hierges, on August 7th, after a short siege, took the small town of 
Oudewater, in the province of Utrecht, and perpetrated the usual barbarities. 
The place had seen the birth of Arminius, the famous theologian, fifteen years 
before : it was now almost blotted 
out of existence. Schoonhoven 
soon after surrendered on fair 
terms. 

LOSS OF SCHOUWEN. 

Another disaster to the 
patriot cause was the loss of 
Schouwen, an island northeast 
of Walcheren. Helpless in 
vessels, the Spaniards reached it 
by an enterprise similar to that 
which had conducted them to 
the relief of Tergoes, and even 
more difficult and dangerous. 
The way w T as shown them by 
traitors : it was again a sub- 
merged and narrow causeway, 
some five feet under water at 
low tide, between the isles of 
Philipsland and Duiveland. 
Over this, a terrible six hours' 
journey, three thousand men 
started on a stormy night, Sep- 
tember 27th. Zealanders in 
boats attacked them, and many 
were killed or drowned. The 
tide came up and swallowed two 
hundred sappers and miners : 
the rear-guard had to retreat ; 
but the main body reached 
Duiveland, drove off a force of auxiliaries there, and passed, by a similar but 
shorter way, to Schouwen. Here they took Brouwershaven, destroyed Bornmenede 
with almost every creature in it, and laid siege to Zierickzee on the south coast. 

The estates of Holland had already voted that it was their duty to "abandon 
the king, as a tyrant who sought to oppress and destroy his subjects." The 




TOWN HALL, LEYDKN 



562 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



sovereignty was now offered to Elizabeth of England ; bnt she, afraid to break 
openly with Philip and yet unwilling to abandon her Protestant allies, entered 
on a long course of tedious and tricky negotiations. The prince, profoundly 
discouraged, turned his mind to the desperate step of wholesale emigration. His 
idea was to get together every vessel within reach ; to place the entire popula- 
tion of Holland and Zealand upon them, with all movable goods ; to cut the 
dykes, open the sluices, and drown the land completely ; and to sail for some 
foreign land. As Motley remarks, this plan, if carried out, might have had 
the most momentous effects on history and human welfare. Imagination is free 
to trace the possible growth of a new state in the far west or east, founded by 
the Avisest and purest man of his time, with settlers unsurpassed in courage, 
intelligence, and virtue. But the scheme was scattered to the winds by an event 

in itself of 
no great im- 
portance, but 
which opened 
the way to a 
train of conse- 
quences so 
vast as to raise 
new hopes for 
liberty. The 
viceroy died 
suddenly on 
March 5th, 
1576, a little 
preceded by 
Vitelli, one 
of his ablest 

SENATE CHAMBER, UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN. officers. 

Requesens was a colorless character, and far from intrinsic greatness of any 
kind ; but he had represented royalty, and he named no successor. The stupid 
advice of Hopper, then envoy at Madrid, and the idiotic delays of Philip, who 
could fix on neither a man nor a policj 7 , prolonged the confusion which ensued, 
until it rose to anarchy. The State Council assumed control ; as natives, most 
of its members were despised by the Spaniards ; as tools of foreign tyranny, they 
were hated by their countrymen. Holland and Zealand, poor and suffering as 
they were, afforded to the obedient provinces an example of manly resistance and 
successful self-government. Their union was modified and cemented by a new act 
of April 25th, 1576. Orange was loaded with business, forgetful of nothing, writing 
innumerable letters, seeking allies everywhere. He was to find them before long. 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 563 

THE MUTINY. 

Zierickzee had been besieged by Mondragon since the fall. A fleet attempted 
to relieve it, but the harbor had been blocked. On May 25th Boisot's vessel, 
the Red Lion, dashed against the obstructions, grounded, and was in danger 
from the shore ; the others were driven away. The admiral and his men could 
•escape only by swimming, and he was drowned in the darkness. The death of 
this brave sailor and able commander, who had relieved Leyden and won several 
notable victories, was a heavy loss to the patriots. On June 21st, Zierickzee 
surrendered on honorable terms. Two hundred thousand guilders were de- 
manded. There was but half that much money in the town ; but a temporary 
mint was set up, and the people brought their spoons, forks, whatever they had of 
silver, to be melted down and turned into coin. The soldiers began to mutiny; 
Mondragon could not control them ; they locked up their officers, and elected 
others, as at Antwerp two } r ears before. Having eaten the isle of Schouweu bare, 
they made their way back to Brabant, and moved southward. After threatening 
Brussels, Mechlin, and other places, they seized Alost in East Flanders, and 
established themselves there, in numbers about two thousand, and doing what 
they pleased. 

Great were the wrath and terror throughout the provinces, and especially in 
the capital. The State Council, moved by the general clamor, denounced the 
mutineers in the king's name as murderers and traitors. The Spanish officers, 
rejected by their men and suspected, if not imprisoned, by the citizens, were 
between two fires, and soon made common cause with the soldiers. Avila, the 
conqueror of Louis Nassau, now commandant of the citadel at Antwerp, laughed 
.at the decree of outlawry. Verdugo, Roda, and others joined him there. Cham- 
pagny, the native Governor of the city, dared not proclaim the edict. By Sep- 
tember all the troops had mutinied. 

Orange was not slow to improve his opportunity. In letters to the Estates 
of Brabant, to those of Gelderland, and to many leading men, he urged the 
necessity of union against the common foe. A congress met at Ghent in 
October to discuss the situation, which had almost assumed the shape of 
civil war. In many places the people rose against the soldiers, but only 
to be slaughtered. At Tisnacq, in an unequal contest of this kind, two 
Spaniards and two thousand citizens fell. The army threatened to attack 
Brussels, and the council took no steps for its defense. Its members had 
.already fallen into popular disfavor, and on September 5th they were arrested 
.and put in prison— a bold step, for which no one wished to appear responsible. 
Del Rio, the Spanish Blood-Councillor, was sent to Orange, who kept him close 
and asked him many unpleasant questions. The garrison of Ghent was besieged 
in the citadel. The prince was asked for troops to help in this, and sent them, 
.relieving the fears of the Catholic malcontents by assuring them that their 



^64 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



religion should not be disturbed. The cannonading and the sessions of the con- 
gress went on together. Maestricht rose, won over the Germans of its garrison, 
and drove out the Spaniards. They returned with reinforcements, and took the 
city by a disgraceful stratagem : the women of a suburb were seized, and each 
soldier of the attacking column held one before him, firing over her shoulder. 
The burghers, unwilling to train their cannon on their neighbors and relatives, 




A CANAL IN LEYDRN. 

were overcome, and Maestricht, on October 20th, suffered the usual horrors in 
full measure. 

ANTWERP IN DANGER. 

Antwerp was now trembling, and the provinces trembled for Antwerp. All 
knew that the soldiers, thirsting for plunder and blood, had turned covetous eyes 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 565 

upon the richest city in the world. The richest city was commanded by the 
.strongest fortress, and that was full of bandits. Avila, their leader, was iu close 
communication with the mutineers at Alost, Maestricht, and elsewhere ; mutineers 
no longer iudeed, for all their officers had joined them, and Roda, as a member 
of the State Council, claimed to represent the king. When all the Spaniards 
in the country should have been collected in the citadel, what defense had Ant- 
werp against their fury ? Only some German troops, led by Van Ende and 
Oberstein. Van Ende and his men were in league with Avila : Oberstein, whose 
wits were none of the brightest, had been beguiled, on October 29th, into signing 
.a treaty with the others, which bound him to disarm the town. Whehne found 
what it meant, he refused to fulfil his promise, informed the authorities, and did 
his part manfully, backed by those under his command. 

To help in the defense, Brussels sent six thousand Walloons under the 
Marquis of Havre, brother of the Duke of Aerschot : with him came Egmont's 
son and other young nobles. They entered Antwerp on November 3d, after 
"being kept outside for a day and a night. Champagny, the governor, hated the 
Spaniards more than he loved Philip, and was in correspondence with Orange ; 
but he distrusted these Walloons, and not without reason. They gave much 
trouble during their brief stay, and were of no use at all when most needed. 

Havre brought letters, taken from couriers on the way, showing that Avila 
had invited the Spaniards from Alost and other places. A ditch was dug and a 
breastwork erected, chiefly by the citizens and their wives, opposite the castle: 
progress was soon interrupted by a cannonade. Champagny seemed to be the 
only efficient officer in the city ; his orders were not fully carried out, the barri- 
cades were imperfect, and there were few cannou. Next morning early, the 
troops of Romero, Valdez, Vargas, and others arrived from many directions, 
leaving the posts they had been appointed to hold, and coming to make war on 
their own account upon a city which had never renounced its allegiance to the 
king. It was no strife now between Papist and Protestant, nor between royalists 
and rebels : the natives of the land were striving simply to protect their homes 
against a foreign army. The Spaniards were all on one side, defying the edict 
of the State Council : the Germans were divided, some in the citadel and others 
among the defenders of the town. 

" THE SPANISH FURY." 

About nine that morning, Sunday, November 4th, a small party emerged 
from the citadel and were driven back by the burghers. Soon after, a moving 
wood, like that which Macbeth saw from Dunsinane, came into sight from the 
southwest ; it was the mutineers of Alost, near three thousand strong, each with 
a twig on his helmet. Avila had waited only for this important portion of his 
force. He offered them food, but though they had marched twenty-four miles in 



5 66 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



the last seven hours, they were impatient for the assault, saying that they would 
sup in Antwerp or dine in Paradise : another place might have been more cor- 
rectly named for the alternative. They marched out together at eleven, kneel- 
ing first to say their prayers, and carrying a banner with the crucifix and the 
Virgin Mary on it. There were but five thousand infantry and six hundred horse- 
in all ; the defenders of that city, not counting the burghers, were more numer- 
ous. With equal discipline and steadiness of valor, the sack of Antwerp might 




THE UNIVERSITY OF LEYDEN. 



have been prevented ; but alas, no troops had yet been found who could stand 
face to face against the Spaniards on dry land. 

They came in two nearly equal bodies by two different streets. The feeble 
barrier gave way before them ; the worthless Walloons turned and fled. The 
Eletto was first on the wall; he was shot down. Over the breastwork they 
swarmed with their terrible war-cries, " Saint James ! Spain ! blood, flesh, fire,, 
sack!" Van Ende's Germans joined them ; those of Count Oberstein, faithful 
to their trust, fought till all were slain. Champagny also did his duty, and did 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



567 



it nobly. He tried to fill the place of Havre, who had demanded the post of 
honor and of danger, and the places of Havre's officers, who had likewise van- 
ished from the scene. He was everywhere, striving to rally the flying cowards, 
rousing the burghers, pleading with the cavalry to make a stand by the horse- 
market; it was in vain. The citizens indeed did what they could; with the last 
of Oberstein's Germans they stood before their beautiful Exchange, opposing a 
wall of flesh to the butchers, and went down in 
hundreds. Others fought along the streets, and 
died, sword or pike in hand, before their doors. 
The carnage was frightful ; the streets and the 
river changed their hue. In the square around 
which were ranged the splendid City Hall and 
the houses of the great guilds, many made their 
last resistance, till Vargas' horsemen sabred and 
trampled them out of life. Others 
picked off the bandits from the 
windows and balconies of the 
buildings, till these were set on 
fire. Near a thousand houses 
were burned, with hun- 
dreds of their inmates. In 
a street near by, behind 
the town house, the bur- 
gomaster and many of his 
colleagues and neighbors 
checked the invaders for 
a time. There the corpses 
lay thick, and not all were 
men of Antwerp. The 
margrave of the city was 
the last to fall here, per- 
haps the last to be slain, 
fighting, in Antwerp, but 
by no means the last to 
die. Women and children, 
as well as men, were mur- 
dered, to the number of 
eight thousand. 

For the citizens there was no- escape: cooped up among their flaming homes, 
they fell sword in hand, or survived at the precarious mercy of their conquerors. 
Those who had come from without to defend them had more chance to get away, 




WATER GATE. 



568 THE STORY OP OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

especially if they were mounted and in full armor. Among these were Havre 
and several of his officers, who had won no glory. Oberstein was drowned while 
making for a boat. Champagny, who, had exposed his life for hours, when he 
could do no more, made his way to the river, and was received on a vessel of 
Orange. 

INCIDENTS OF THE MASSACRE. 

With nightfall the fight was practically over, but not the slaughter. The 
sack was more horrible than the combat, for the terrors and torments of the 
defenseless are worse than the wounds and death of those who can strike as well 
as suffer. The greed of these human bloodhounds was a positive mania. Treas- 
ure, when they secured it, was of little use to them, being in most cases speed- 
ily wasted or gambled away ; but to get it they would break every law of God 
and man, and shrink from no atrocity. Two ladies shut themselves in their 
cellar : the door was blown up with powder, the mother killed, the daughter 
strung up again and again, and let down when nearly strangled, to extort inform- 
ation which she could not give. The villains left her hanging : she was released 
by a servant who chanced to enter, but her mind was gone. In another wealthy 
hous<", a wedding had unluckily been appointed for this wretched day. The feast 
which followed was rudely interrupted by the sounds of slaughter, but neither 
family nor guests could fly. When the robbers entered, money, jewels, what- 
ever was portable, was given them, but all was not enough. The bridegroom 
was stabbed, then the bride's mother and many more. The bride, a noted beauty, 
was seized, taken to the citadel, and locked in a room, while her abductor went 
off to seek more plunder. Her father snatched a sword from one of the Span- 
iards, and killed two or three of them before he was cut down. The bride, left 
alone in the fortress, tried to hang herself with a heavy gold chain. The kid- 
napper came back, stripped her bare, flogged her till the blood came in streams, 
and turned her into the street to die. These are but specimen outrages, two 
cases out of many. If the earth had opened to swallow the ruined and bleeding 
city, if the fires of heaven had descended to consume it while the massacre yet 
raged, it would have been a relief to the survivors, and scant justice to the fiends 
w T ho laid it waste. 

The murdering and pillaging went on for two daj^s. Only about two hun- 
dred Spaniards fell. There were three thousand corpses in the streets, almost as 
many more in the houses, and another three thousand, it was believed, in the 
river. For destruction of life, the Spanish Fury, as it was called, was another 
St Bartholomew. As to property, the value of six million crowns was stolen, 
and as much more burned. The criminals in the city jail, or such of them as 
could pay for their release, were set free by a captain who took his part of the 
plunder in this shape. The exchange was turned into a gambling-hell ; one 
dragoon lost ten thousand dollars in a single day, Most of the finest buildings 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



5 6 9 



were in ruins. All the public documents and other contents of the City Hall 
were destroyed. As the Estates of Brabant wrote to the States-General of the 
provinces, "Antwerp was but yesterday the chief ornament of Europe, the refuge 
of all nations, the source and' supply of countless treasure, the nurse of arts and 
industry : she is now a gloomy 



■cavern, full of robbers and mur- 
derers, the enemies of God and 
man." Yet Roda had the impu- 
dence to write to Philip, congratu- 
lating him on a ' 'very great victory, 
and enormous damage to the city," 
and praising Avila, Romero, and 
the rest, for their conduct. He 
knew what would please his 
master. 

TREATY OF GHENT 

Madrid might be gratified at 

the news, but the Netherlands felt 

■quite differently. A howl of exe- 
cration went up everywhere, and 

the deliberations of the congress 

at Ghent received fresh stimulus 

and a much sharper point. A 

letter from Orange, written just 

before the massacre, was read in 

the glaring light that streamed from 

Antwerp, and helped the deputies 

to see their way. On November 

8th, a treaty was concluded between 

the commissioners of the Prince, 

representing Holland and Zealand, 
and those of Brabant, Flanders, 
Utrecht, and the other central 
and southern provinces. We need 
not enlarge on its provisions, for 
they were not long in force; but 
they bound all the provinces to- 
gether in amity and alliance against 
the Spaniards. Their expulsion was the first object: other matters were to be 
settled by the States-General. The past was to be forgotten, and religious per- 
secution to cease. Hast}' and imperfect as was this agreement, difficult as its 




THE GREAT TOWER, ZIERICKZEE. 



57° 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



execution was to prove, it achieved the most important end accomplished by- 
diplomacy in all these years. 

Two military events in the same interest occurred at the same time. The 
fort or citadel of Ghent fell before the cannon of its besiegers, and Zierickzee, 
with the rest of Schouwen and the adjoining island, was regained by Count. 
Hohenlo, acting for the prince. Another incident boded less well for liberty. 
Don John of Austria, the new governor, reached Luxemburg, on the southeast 
border of the provinces, on November 3d. He came disguised as a Moorish, 
slave, with a single Italian cavalier and six soldiers. 




DUTCH OFFICER.. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



DON JOHN. 




HE new governor had been publicly acknowledged 
as a brother by the king, and as a son by the 
Emperor Charles V., though his mother, a Ger- 
man laundress, in one of her frequent furies,, 
denied this paternity. He was a gallant soldier, 
and had won great fame at the naval battle of 
Lepanto against the Turks. Young, adventurous, 
and romantic, he regarded the Netherlands merely 
as a stepping-stone to future and higher honors, 
not knowing that he was to find there little glory, 
much discomfort, and an early death. Such per- 
sonal virtues as he had could be only an encum- 
brance in his new position, and of small profit to 
the friends of liberty, for Spain produced nothing 
but bigots, and Philip was not one to change his 
plans. To lie, to conquer, to tyrannize and persecute, were all he wanted of 
his viceroys. 

The counsels of Orange to his new allies went straight to the point at 
issue. "Make no agreement with him," he wrote to the States-General on 
November 30th, "unless the Spanish and other foreign troops have first been 
sent away. Beware, meantime, of disbanding your own forces, for that would 
be to put the knife into his hands to cut your throats. Remember, this is not 
play, and you have to choose between total ruin and manly celf-defense." He 
went on to say that all the old privileges must be maintained, the citadels 
destroyed, and all affairs managed by the body he was addressing. 

This advice wao heeded. Early in December deputies waited on Don John, 
who was still at Luxemburg, and stated their case plainly. The}' demanded, 
that the troops be removed, the Ghent treaty maintained, and the States-General 
assembled as of old. On these conditions they would accept him as governor, 
and render due and loyar obedience. He agreed to send off the army, but insisted 
that it should go by sea. This, as they soon found reason to suspect, meant a 
descent on England, so they opposed it vehementl}-. While the matter was still 



under discussion, the so-called Union of Brussels was drawn 



up in January, 

(570 



572 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

1577, and signed by all the chief men of the provinces, including Friesland and 
Groningen. It was a popular movement in the same interest, to get rid of the 
odious foreign soldiers. 

DEMANDS OF THE ESTATES GRANTED. 

More discussions, held at Huy in Liege on January 24th, ended in a violent 
quarrel. The governor lost his temper, and called the deputies rebels and 
traitors. From words they nearly came to blows, and all went to bed in a rage. 
But by next morning Don John had cooled down and bent to necessity. Yes, 
he would maintain the peace and the treaty, if they were not against the king's 
authority and the Catholic religion. That was a large if, of which advantage 
might be taken later. For the present there was a new emperor in Germany, 
Spain was far away, and the provinces were united and resolute. Let him once 
get firmly in the saddle, and then he would see what he could do. Since it was 
necessary first to get there, he 3uelded every point, one after another. The 
troops should go by land, and the sanction of the local clergy was admitted as 
proving the Treaty of Ghent satisfactory and harmless to king and Church. 
An edict to this effect was signed by both parties on February 12th and 17th. 

It was signed by both parties, but not by all. The deputies of Orange with- 
held their names. The prince was disappointed and dissatisfied. He would have 
demanded more, had he supposed that the viceroy would concede so much. He 
knew the value of Spanish promises, and had a bundle of intercepted letters prov- 
ing bad faith. He complained that the Estates "had rushed upon the boar-spear." 
Don John once installed, who could force him to expel the knaves who had 
ruined Antwerp? That should have been done before the new man was admitted. 
Why should the Estates, which had outlawed these assassins before their worst 
■ crime was committed, permit them to go with all their plunder, and even pay their 
wages too? If peace was really meant, why was his son, the young Count 
Buren, still kept a prisoner in Spain ? Holland and Zealand, though again 
alone, were united as one man. Better another war than be entrapped, deceived, 
destroyed. 

ATTEMPTS TO BRIBE ORANGE. 

But the governor was not .for war, or not just then. On the contrary, he 
sincerely desired peace, and peace meant the conciliation of Orange. " This is 
the pilot who guides the bark," he wrote to Madrid. "He alone can destroy or 
save it. The greatest obstacles would disappear if he could be gained." To 
this end, therefore, he bent his efforts, supposing, as many later statesmen have 
done, that every man has his price. His letters to Philip were extremely frank. 
"Your majesty's name is as much abhorred and despised in the Netherlands as 
that of the Prince of Orange is loved and feared. I am negotiating with him, 
and giving him every security, for I see that everything depends on him. Matters 
."have reached such a pass that we must make a virtue of necessity. If he lend 




A WOMAN OF HOLLAND, WITH GOLD HEAD DRESS. 



573" 



J574 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



an ear to my proposals, it will be only on very advantageous conditions. We 
will have to submit to these, rather than lose all." 

The prince, however, was not to be purchased. He told the viceroy's envoys 
-.that he had had some experience of royal promises, and preferred to lay any 

propositions before the 
Estates of Holland and 
Zealand, for whom he was 
acting. To Don 
John's letters he re- 
plied, in language 
worthy of a patriot, 
that the chief 



thing in his eye 
was the welfare 
of the people, 
in comparison 
with which it 
was not his habit 
to consider his 
private and per- 
sonal interests. 

His prudent 
fears proved 
somewhat un- 
just to the Es- 
tates, which did 
not accept the 
new governor 
till the condi- 
tions were fulfilled, 
and to Don John, 
who was not so bad 
a man as his master. 
, he was honest 
nth regard to the 
' the troops. This 




enom 



was delayed some time, for 



ZEALAND JEWELRY. 

-there was difficulty in raising money for the expenses of the journey; but they 
marched in the end of April, and went straight on to Italy, leaving ten thousand 
Cermans in the royal service. Meanwhile the viceroy was making himself agree- 
able at Louvain, and gaining a good deal of transient popularity. The departing 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 575 

.'Spaniards gave up the Antwerp citadel to the Duke of Aerschot, who was promi- 
ment by virtue of his rank, but a weak character and an extremely poor patriot. 

On May 1st Don John was received at Brussels with much pomp and elabo- 
rate festivities ; but he was not happy there. He did not like the country or the 
people ; he had been disappointed in all his schemes ; he believed there were plots 
against his liberty. He wrote dolefulty to Madrid, and soon began to ask in vain 
to be relieved of an irksome post, in which he could do nothing. His gloom 
would have been yet greater, had he known that he was suspected of treacherous 
intentions, and caught in the meshes of a plot at once infernal and insane. 
Philip, guided by the secretary Perez, tried to elicit his inmost thoughts by con- 
fidential letters, hoping to find or manufacture some evidence of treason on the 
part of this too faithful servant ; and Don John's confident, Escovedo, was 
deco}^edto Spain within the year, and there murdered by order of the king, who 
rewarded the assassin with presents, pensions, and commissions in the army. 
Such was the detestable diplomacy of Spain. 

THE VICEROY DISAPPOINTED. 

In May the Governor made a last effort to come to terms with Orange. A 
long conference was held at Middleburg ; it accomplished nothing, for the vexed 
■question of faith and worship was in the way. The prince was forced to say 
plainly to the envoys, " We see that you intend to extirpate us. YVe have sub- 
mitted to you in good faith, andnow you would compel us to maintain the Roman 
religion. That can be done only by destroying us." 

The viceroy now made up his mind to war. He issued a persecuting edict, 
and presided at the beheading of a poor tailor of Mechlin. Soon after, he seized 
the citadel of Namur, near the French border, and established himself there. 
This was a mistake, for it showed the obedient provinces that his intentions were 
treacherous and hostile, and set them against him, so that he was soon involved 111 
an angry controversy with the Estates. He had already written the king that 
the people hated him and that he abhorred them. 

Very different was the feeling toward Orange. Respected everywhere, he 
was deeply loved and absolutely trusted in Holland and Zealand. When he 
travelled, the people cried with joy, "Father William has come!" He was 
invited to Utrecht, and his visit led to an alliance with that city and province, 
on a basis of entire toleration. 

Don John felt more and more the wretchedness of his false position. He 
was a soldier, with no especial gifts except for war, and he was in no position to 
fight. An attempt to possess himself of Antwerp citadel failed, and brought him 
■deeper into discredit. Some troops of the states, led by Champagny's nephew, 
defeated and drove off Van Ende's regiment, which had taken part in the massa- 
■cre. The other German soldiers barricaded themselves in the New Town, and 



576 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

were bargaining with the burghers, who offered them a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand crowns to leave, and were ready to double the amount. Suddenly rose a 
cry, "The Beggars are coming." The ships of Orange, under Admiral Haul- 
tain, sailed up the Scheld, and fired two or three shots at the barricades. The 
Germans ran in a panic, and the merchants kept their money. This was on 
August i st. The mercenaries took refuge in Bergen and Breda, where they were 
besieged and forced to surrender. Their colonels, Fugger and Frondsberger,, 
were given up with the towns. These villains had joined with the Spaniards in 
the Antwerp Fury, and ought to have been hanged for their crimes ; but the scaf- 
fold in those days generally found the wrong victims. 

Great was the joy in Antwerp, delivered, for the first time in twelve years r 
from its foreign oppressors. The survivors of the massacre made haste to pull 
down the hated citadel. Citizens of every rank, ten thousand of them or more,, 
labored day and night till all the side fronting the city was in ruins. Then they 
slept in peace, for the fortress could no longer shelter robbers and murderers. 
In a cellar was found Alva's statue, which Requesens had removed. It was 
dragged in triumph through the streets, insulted, defaced, destroyed. Most of it 
was turned into cannon for the national defense ; bits of it were kept as relics of 
the detested past. 

ORANGE AT BRUSSELS. 

As Don John had written, Orange was the chief man in the country. 
Though only stadtholder of two small provinces, it was his counsels that guided 
affairs throughout the Netherlands, so far as they were guided with wisdom or to 
any useful end. The Estates-General now invited him to Brussels, which he 
had left on Alva's approach, eleven years before. In all that interval he had been 
a proscribed rebel under sentence of death. Of late the tyrant's vicegerent had 
offered him any terms he chose to name : he had refused, for he was not fighting 
for his own hand. Now the governor dared not leave the citadel of Namur ; the 
country was practically in rebellion, and even the great nobles, rigid Catholics as' 
they were, admitted that nothing could be done without the heretic outlaw. 
Champagny, Aerschot, and other envoys went to Holland to beg his presence at 
the capital. He told them he could not go without the consent of his free prov- 
inces ; and this was not easily won. Setting out almost alone, he received an 
ovation at Antwerp, and another at Brussels on September 23d. 

His first work was to stop the negotiations with the governor. The envoys 
of the Estates had made a treaty at Namur : Orange, whose word was law for 
the moment, said it must not be ratified, and insisted on other and more stringent 
terms. Don John must give up the Namur citadel and all the forts, disband all 
his troops, retire to Luxemburg, restore all confiscated property, release prisoners, 
and procure the immediate return from Spain of Count Buren, the prince's son. 
The viceroy, of course, could not accept these humiliating conditions ; so war was 




577 



578 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

declared. He wished it to be deferred a little, but the Estates, knowing that he 
was constantly receiving reinforcements from the south and east, would allow no 
more than three days of truce. To set themselves right before the world, they 
issued a pamphlet in seven languages, stating their case, and adding intercepted 
letters to show the governor's bad faith. He replied in a similar publication, 
giving his side of the story. 

Two factions at this time divided the Catholic provinces. The plain people 
were attached to Orange and glad to follow his lead: but the nobles, jealous of 
his rising power, held other views. Most of these were men of small ability, 
less principle, and no real patriotism. Till lately they had been the willing 
servants of tyranny. Carried along perforce on the current of events, all that 
Aerschot, his son Havre, and others like them cared about was their own great- 
ness and the means of increasing it. Orange trusted them "as he would adders 
fanged," knowing that their services to liberty could be but slight and casual. 
They had sent an envoy to Vienna in August, to offer a sort of doubtful sover- 
eignty to the Archduke Matthias, brother of the Emperor Rudolph and a boy of 
twenty years. He was allured by their proposals, and early in October set forth 
with a few attendants, disguised and in the night. He was received at Antwerp 
by Orange, who, through his own management and that of his ally the English 
queen, had accepted the post of lieutenant-general, thus turning what might 
have been defeat for himself and his cause into a step forward. He was 
also elected Ruward of Brabant, an ancient office, long vacant, and nearly equal 
to that of dictator. Of Flanders he had several times been stadtholder, and 
might resume the place almost at will. Matthias, when formally accepted as 
governor-general, was but a puppet in the hands of his subjects and their real 
ruler. 

RISING AT GHENT. 

His inauguration was deferred for several months, during which Ghent 
became a scene of strife. Aerschot, appointed by the State Council Governor 
of Flanders, repaired on October 20th to that city, where he was far from wel- 
come. It contained many Protestants, more lovers of liberty, and not a few who 
would now be communists or anarchists, always ready for revolt. A secret society 
of twenty thousand members was pledged to rise at the call of leaders who knew 
the duke too well to love or trust him. The chief of these were two men of 
rank, whose sentiments at every point were the extreme reverse of those held by 
most of the nobles. Ryhove and Imbize were young, restless, radical, vehement 
haters of Spain and Rome, lovers of the prince and popular liberty, and ready 
for any desperate deed. 

Aerschot's manners did not lessen his unpopularity in Ghent, and an inter- 
cepted letter (whether genuine or forged) of the old Blood-Councillor Hessels 
hastened the outbreak, for it intimated that the duke was in the interest of Philip 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 579 

and Don John, and would soon "circumvent the scandalous heretic with all his 
adherents." The reactionists grew loud and threatening; the eld charters 
should never be restored, they said, and those who talked of privileges would 
get halters. Ryhove visited Orange at Antwerp early in November, and 
asked for help: the prince could not openly favor so irregular a project, but 
allowed it to be understood that its success would not displease him. That 
night the conspirators rose in Ghent, arrested Aerschot and the leaders of his 
party, and established a provisional government, with Ryhove at its head. No 
blood was shed, though the duke's person was attacked, and manfully shielded 
hy the patriot captain at the risk of his own life. 

This local revolution caused much excitement through the countrv, and 
served as an example for similar efforts. It was too irregular for the authorities 
to approve ; even Orange found it necessary to offer some mild censure, and to 
ask for the release of the prisoners. Aerschot was freed, but the rest were 
kept in prison, whence Hessels and another were taken out only to be hanged a 
year later. 

RIVAL GOVERNORS. 

On December 7th, the States-General declared Don John to be no longer 
governor, but a public enemy, and his native supporters rebels and traitors. 
Three days later a new Union was signed at Brussels, on a basis of equality 
between the two religions. So far, all had gone to the prince's mind and after 
his heart. His wise counsels, his mighty influence, had done their work at last. 
Young Egmont and the other Catholic nobles assented, or at least submitted 
with professed cheerfulness, to this triumph of liberal statesmanship. Protestant- 
ism, supposed to be suppressed long ago in Brabant and Flanders, reared its 
head again; the Calvinists came out of their hiding-places, and praised God in 
their own language without fear. An alliance was soon made with Elizabeth of 
England, who agreed to lend troops and money. Matthias was to be governor- 
general, taking an oath of allegiance to the king (this fiction was still preserved, 
as before by Holland when it was alone in rebellion) and to the States-General. 
Orange was to retain his post of Ruward, and to be lieutenant-general. The 
archduke accepted the conditions on December 17th, and a month later was 
installed with the usual processions and spectacles at Brussels. It was a very 
empty honor on which he entered, and a merely nominal part that he played in 
Netherlands history for nearly four years. 

Don John's wrath and disgust were freely expressed in a long letter to the 
emperor, whom he asked to recall his intruding brother. Princes, he said, ought 
to stand by each other in keeping their subjects in order, since "liberty is a con- 
tagious disease, wmich goes on infecting one after another, it the cure be not 
promptly applied." But he d ; d more than write and complain ; he was gathering 
an army at Luxemburg. Mansfeld had brought troops from France, and others 



5 8o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



came from the south, under Prince Alexander of Parma, a nephew and former 
schoolmate of Don John. The Spaniards had come back, and would soon be 
heard from after their old fashion. Mondragon and Mendoza Were in the prov- 
inces again, with over twenty thousand veterans. Thus backed, and with a 
lieutenant who was soon to rival or eclipse his fame, the most admired soldier of 
Europe might be expected to carve out a career more creditable to himself, and 
more painful to his rebellious subjects, than had been his for the last fourteen 
inglorious months. On January 25th, 1578, he put forth a proclamation in 
French, German, and Flemish, summoning all to return to their allegiance and 




ST. ANTHONY'S WEIGH-HOUSE, AMSTERDAM. 



repeating his intention to maintain the rights of Philip and the pope against all. 
rebels and heretics. It was no idle threat. As in 1572, the advance of freedom 
was to be followed by disasters, and the work to be done over again or broken to 
pieces and left past mending. 

It would be too much to expect that a great statesman and a model patriot 
should be also a mighty warrior. The place of Orange was in the council- 
chamber rather than the field ; and he had neither the disposition nor the power 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 5 8r 

of a tyrant. He did what he could, but he could not repress base jealousies, nor 
ignore rank that had little merit to support it ; he could not make traitors loyal 
nor cowards brave. The army of the States was about equal to the enemy in 
numbers, but inferior in every other respect. Most of the men were mercenaries ; 
the officers, except Champagny and Bossu, who commanded the centre, were not 
of eminent ability, and few of them were devoted to the cause. Incredible as it 
may appear, and impossible as it would be under stricter discipline, the three 
chief commanders, Lalain of the infantry, Melun of the cavalry, and La Motte 
of the artillery, were actually absent from their posts, attending a wedding, when 
the armies met. They were justly charged with treachery. 

If the States' forces were half-hearted in this busines?, the Spaniards were 
not. They enjoyed also the consolations and encouragements of religion — of a 
certain kind. The pope had rushed to their support after his manner, proclaim- 
ing this a holy war, offering full pardon of all sins to those who took up arms on 
the right side, and — which was much more expensive— authorizing Don John to 
tax or use church property. How much the Catholic officers on the other side 
were afflicted by these thunders is left to the imagination; perhaps such 
denouncements of Heaven's wrath or favor were growing a little stale. 

DISASTER AT GEMBLOURS. 

The chief officers present with the rebel army were De Goignies, who had at 
least experience, and Havre. On January 31st they turned from the nighbor- 
hood of Namur and marched in a northwesterly direction towards Gemblours. 
Most of the cavalry, about fifteen hundred, were at the rear, under Egmont and 
La Marck, a relative of the late admiral. These horsemen might better have 
been at the bottom of the sea, for they did vastly more harm than good. Don 
John pursued, with his banner bearing a cross and the Latin motto, "In this sign 
I vanquished the Turks, in this I will overcome the heretics." His cavalry were 
in the van ; some of these, with a thousand foot, under Gonzaga and Mondragon, 
were detained to harass the enemy's rear, which was moving, not in the best 
order, on the edge of a wet and perilous ravine. While the skirmishing was 
going on, Parma came up and saw his opportunity. "With the foremost horse he 
floundered through the ravine and attacked in flank and rear. Egmont did his 
■duty, but he did it almost alone. 

The States' cavalry, seized with panic, thought only of escape, and galloped 
through or over their friends in front, throwing the centre in hopeless confusion. 
Goignies tried in vain to rally his men ; without making the least resistance, 
they cast down their arms and followed the cavalry, though with far less chance 
of saving their worthless bodies. For an hour and a half Parma and his small 
force, reckoned at from six to twelve hundred, rode about hacking and hewing, with 
scarcely a man hurt. It was a massacre, not a battle. Eight or ten thousand 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

perished — half the army that had been hired to fight for freedom. Six hun- 
dred prisoners were taken, and all were hanged or drowned. All the cannon 
and munitions of war, with thirty-four standards, fell into the hands of the 
Spaniards. 

AMSTERDAM WON. 

This victory of Parma's (for it was his alone) profited the governor less 
than might have been expected. Louvain and other small towns opened their 




SLAUGHTER OF THE STATES' FORCES AT GEMBOURS. 



gates to him, and several more were taken by force and cruelly punished; but 
these included no place of great importance. It was midwinter, and the roads 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 583 

were in no condition for military movements. The patriots laid their late defeat 
at the door of absent, incompetent, or treacherous commanders. There was much 
indignation at Brussels, and Orange with difficulty prevented an attack upon cer- 
tain nobles. Amsterdam, the chief city and capital of Holland, had all this time 
refused to join the confederacy. Most of its people were Protestants, but the 
magistrates were not, and the monks were numerous and active. Ever since the 
Spanish garrison was removed, the town had been looked upon with angry and 
covetous eyes by the zealous liberals of its own province and of Zealand. Orange, 
whose love for orderly measures and respect for local liberty were perhaps carried 
to excess in so turbulent a time, had forbidden any attack from without. Others, 
who were less scrupulous, engaged in frequent plots to take the city ; and in 
November, 1577, an enterprise projected by Sonoy ended in bloodshed and failure. 
At length, through the good offices of Utrecht, a treaty was made on February 
8th, 1578. By this the Calvinists were allowed to hold their services outside the 
walls, and to bury their dead within them. Though this measure of toleration 
was less than that granted in the central and southern provinces, it brought 
Amsterdam over to the national cause ; and this gain was thought to more than 
match whatever Don John's arms had won. 

But the thoroughgoing Reformers within the city were not satisfied till they 
could control the magistrates and the militia. Bardez, a warm patriot, planned 
a model rising, and secured the help of Sonoy. On May 28th he went to the coun- 
cil-house with others, to complain of their grievances. At noon one of them 
appeared on the balcony and raised his hat. At this signal a sailor raised a flag 
on the square and called on all who loved the Prince of Orange to follow him. 
Instantly the streets were full of armed men. Bardez arrested the magistrates, 
while parties went here and there and secured the monks. The prisoners were 
taken to the wharves and placed upon a ship, the mob shouting, " Hang them ! " 
They thought they were to be drowned, in vengeance for their cruelties ; one of 
the council refused a parcel sent by his wife, saying that he would need no 
more clean shirts in this world. But no violence was done ; they were simply 
landed on a dyke and told not to return to the city at their peril. New magis- 
trates were installed, the train-bands filled with trusty patriots, amd the churches 
opened to the Protestants. Amsterdam was now securely on the side of freedom. 

A similar rising, not quite so peaceably conducted, occurred the next day at 
Harlem. Holland and Zealand were now united, and the last vestige of the 
Spanish occupation gone. In these provinces the prince had to defend the rights 
of Catholic worship, which the people were minded to disregard or deny. In 
Flanders and Brabant he protected the equal liberty, so recently won, of those 
who believed as he did. The burgomaster of Antwerp came to complain that fif- 
teen Reformed ministers were preaching in the city, and asked him to suppress 
the scandal. " Do you think," said William with some dry humor, " that I, at 



584 THE STORY OV OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

this late day, can do what the Duke of Alva could not with all his power ? " It 
was far from his desire to do anything of the kind. He wished to see no more 
meddling with private consciences, but absolute and equal liberty of belief and 
worship. The Anabaptists were still generally hated, and they held some strange 
notions regarding government : Orange was their only champion. He rebuked 
the authorities of Middelburg for disturbing these people, and ordered that they 
be let alone. 

Meantime a native envoy had returned from Spain and started some perfectly 
useless negotiations. It was soon apparent to both parties that the controversy 
could be decided only by the sword. Philip had sent his viceroy nearly two 
million dollars, and promised him two hundred thousand a month. Orange was 
raising funds by equal taxation, except that Holland and Zealand, which till 
lately had carried the whole war, were left to contribute what they could or would. 
This righteous exemption worked well, for they raised more than their share for 
the common need. 

A BARREN CAMPAIGN. 

Military preparations went on during the spring and early summer, but 
little came of them. Don John had near thirty thousand men ; the Estates had 
about twenty thousand, under Bossu and the Huguenot La Noue. The well- 
grounded feeling against the nobles had subsided or been disregarded, for Aer- 
schot and the rest were still in high places. Duke Casimir of the Palatinate, 
with twelve thousand Germans, was stalled for some weeks near Zutphen, for 
lack of money to pay his troops, who would not advance without it. The two 
armies faced each other for a while on the borders of Limburg, Antwerp, and 
South Brabant, east of the chief cities, but only the outposts were engaged. On 
August 1st there was a fight at Rijnemants, in which, strange to say, the Span- 
iards were defeated with the loss of a thousand. After this, as often before it, the 
viceroy offered battle, but„ it was refused. Bossu was much blamed for this 
conduct : the patriots remembered that he had long been an officer of Philip and 
Alva, and doubted his fidelity ; but he was probably wise in declining a general 
engagement with a force so much superior to his own. Don John soon retired to 
Namur, having won no new laurels. Casimir arrived on August 26th, but 
there was to be no more fighting just then. 

In its stead came confused intrigues and profitless diplomacy, on which we 
have no need to dwell. The Duke d'Alen?on, whom Motley calls "the most 
despicable personage who ever entered the Netherlands," came with professions 
of friendship to Orange and the Estates, but with designs to find for himself a 
throne. Here was a third pretender — for we must not forget poor Matthias, a 
harmless youth, often in tears at the slights that were put upon his mock dignity. 
The real ruler of the provinces was one who cared little for titles, who had no 
selfish schemes, whose arts were all employed for the welfare of his country. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY 



53 5 



The north, for the present, was united, peaceful and safe. Count John of 
Nassau, the generous and faithful brother of Orange, was now governor of Gel- 
derland. 

In Brabant and Flanders the Silent Prince was thwarting the plots of ene- 
mies and false friends, and doing his best to enforce mutual toleration and repress 




CHILDREN OF THE PROTESTANT ORPHANAGE, IN AMSTERDAM, THEIR DRESS HALF RED 

AND HALF BLACK. 

the wretched bigotry which cursed the land and blocked the advance of freedom. 
Champagny and other nobles offered a formal protest against the' licensing of 



5 86 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



heresy : tlie people of Brussels rose with cries of " Paris" and " St. Bartholo- 
mew," and threw these petitioners into prison. 

DEATH OF DON JOHN. 

In the south, baffled ambition and helpless rage were eating out the heart 
of the conqueror of Lepanto. Philip's promises were not kept, the army was 
unpaid. Alencon had declared war against him from Mons; the States' troops 
threatened him on the other side. Outwitted by Orange, hated by his rebellious 
subjects, unjustly suspected by his royal brother, his friend Bscovedo murdered,, 
his soaring plans all brought to naught, he sat in his camp near Namur and 
mused on the vanity of human hopes. He wrote bitterly to the Icing, "The 
work here is enough to destroy any constitution and any life ; " and to a friend 
in Italy, "They have cut off our hands, and we have now nothing for it but to 
stretch out our heads also to the axe " In another letter he complained that he 
was kept in ignorance of his master's intentions, and left, crying out for help in 
vain, " to pine away till his last breath." 

These gloomy predictions were soon fulfilled. On October ist, 1578, Don 
John died of a fever, or, as some thought, of poisou. He was but thirty-three,, 
and had qualities which, with an another education, might have made him useful ;, 
but the position of Spaniards in that age was so fatally false, so hostile to liberty, 
progress, and real civilization, that the removal of any of them who meddled 
with foreign lands was no calamity — except as he might make way for one yet 
worse. 




^ '" 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



HARD TIMES. 




LEXANDER FARNESE, Prince of Parma, the next 
of Philip's governors, had the advantage of being 
already on the spot. He was a few months 
younger than his late uncle, Don John, whom 
he equalled in valor and far surpassed in ability. 
The great-grandson of a pope and grandson of 
an emperor, he seemed bom for high destinies : 
his ancestor, Paul III., had predicted for him a 
great career in arms. His father was a distin- 
guished soldier ; almost cradled in battles and 
sieges, his chief delight was war. Enough of 
his 3-outh was passed in Spain to receive the 
stamp of its indomitable chivalry and its ruth- 
less bigotry. He made acquaintance with the 
Netherlands during his mother's regency there. 
While unoccupied at Parma, he varied the tedium 
of domestic life by midnight duels with strangers in the streets, till his disguise 
was penetrated and this amusement stopped. At Eepanto, receiving from his 
uncle several galleys in the front rank, he boarded the Turkish treasure-ship, 
led the assault in person, slew with his own hand its captain and many more, 
and took this vessel and another, with an immense booty. Maturer years, with- 
out lessening his courage, had taken off its edge of rashness, and brought a 
grim kind of cold and resolute wisdom. He was no longer a knight-errant, but 
he meant to be a conqueror. 

During the lifetime of his wife, the Princess Maria of Portugal, who had 
been taken to Brussels for her wedding, he trusted his safety in this world 
and the next to her prayers. After her death, his religion consisted of a rigid 
attendance at daily mass and a determination to put down all blackguard heretics. 
He stood by the principles of his order, which were chiefly the Church of Rome 
and the absolutism of his uncle Philip: humanity, common justice, and popular 
rights had of course no place in his scheme. For the rest, he was temperate, 
dignified, and distant. Don John, under more favoring circumstances, might 

(587) 



588 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

have been loved by some ; Parma was one to be feared by all. Even in his 
looks there was something of threat as well as of command. If trained under 
a different system and to ideas the opposite of those he held most firmly, he 
might have been a great and useful man. Trained as he had been, he was 
the most dangerous foe that Dutch liberty had yet encountered or was likely 
to encounter. To a task more delicate and difficult than that of Alva he brought 
•qualities far finer than Alva's dense brutality. "He knew precisely the work 
which Philip required, and felt himself to be precisely the workman that had 
so long been wanted. Cool, incisive, fearless, artful, he united the unscrupulous 
audacity of a condottiere with the wily patience of a Jesuit. He could coil 
unperceived through unsuspected paths, could strike suddenly and sting mor- 
tally. He came prepared not only to smite the Netherlanders in the open field, 
but to cope with them in tortuous policy, to outwatch and outweary them in 
the game to which his impatient predecessor had fallen a baffled victim. To 
circumvent at once both their negotiators and their men-at-arms was his 
appointed task." 

CONFUSION IN THE PROVINCES. 

He ' found the central and southern provinces in a condition more favorable 
to his schemes than to the ends of liberty. The old religious feuds were 
rampant, the Pacification of Ghent was slighted and disregarded. Some Catho- 
lics stood firm for the national cause ; others, including the nobles, were more 
than half ready to make their peace with the king. Bands of " Malcontents " 
roved about in search of plunder. The Protestants, not finding the toleration 
which had been promised, were sore and angry. Four armies, idle and unpaid, 
remained in the country, and contributed nothing to its prosperity and peace. 
Two foreign intermeddlers of high degree, D'Alencon and John Casimir, made 
matters worse by their foolish and selfish intrigues, until their departure in the 
winter of 1578-79. Ghent, always factious and turbulent, disgraced the cause of 
freedom by its lawless disorders. Ryhove took Blood-Councillor Hessels and 
another dignitary out of prison on October 4th, carried them beyond the gates, 
and hanged them. Violent riots occurred ; the churches were attacked, images 
and ornaments destroyed, and the Catholics driven from the town. Brussels 
offered remonstrances on these proceedings : Orange visited Ghent at the end of 
the year, and strove to restore order. The second city of the provinces had 
fallen from her high estate : " grass was growing and cattle were grazing m 
the streets." 

Outside the walls of the various cities there was still less security for 
property or life. The Malcontents under Montigny, the disbanded troops of 
Alencon and the others, swept the land bare. Havre complained that "they 
demanded the most delicate food, and drank champagne and burgundy by the 
pailful." The Germans who had been brought by Casimir, after coolly asking 




.PULPIT IN NEW CHURCH, AMSTERDAM. 



5S9 



59Q THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

Parma to pay their wages, departed, singing songs of which Motle}' has given 
us a specimen: 

O have you been in Brabant, fighting for the States ? 

O have you brought back anything except your broken pates ? 

O I have been in Brabant, myself and all my mates. 

We'll go no more to Brabant, unless our brains are addle. 

We're coming home on foot, we went there in the saddle ; 

For there's neither gold nor glory got in fighting for the States. 

This was true enough in their case, for they had had no fighting at all. 

BRIBERY. THE SOUTH LOST. 

The governor, as has been said, was a master of arts no less than of arms. 
He was now fishing with a golden hook, and most of the nobles were ready 
enough to take the bait. These men, who held high commissions in the States* 
army and had been entrusted with the government of towns and fortresses, were 
jealous of Orange and incapable of real patriotism. La Motte was the first to 
be bought, and helped in the purchase of others. Montigny, Lalain, Havre, 
Egmont, and many more, betrayed the cause in which they had enlisted, and 
went back to the more congenial service of tyranny. There was much bargain- 
ing for higher prices, and some scandalous exposures of their greed were made. 
The prior Sarrasin, who was Parma's chief agent in this business of bribery and 
'corruption, was rewarded with the richest abbey in the Netherlands, and after- 
wards made Archbishop of Cambray. 

The secession of these venal nobles involved that of the southern or Wal- 
loon provinces. Artois, Hainault, Lille, Douay, and Orchies (now mostly in 
France) signed a league of their own on January 6th, 1579, and the Malcontent 
chiefs and their followers returned to their old allegiance three months later. 
The Estates in vain appealed to feelings which did not exist, and the few patri- 
ots of the south strove in vain to check the backward tide. The last rising in 
these parts occurred at Arras late in 1578. Gosson, an eloquent and wealthy 
lawyer, called his confederates to arms, imprisoned the magistrates, and held the 
city for three days. Sarrasin bribed their captain, Ambrose, to desert his post ; 
the tables were soon turned, and the leaders of the insurrection brought to the 
gallows or the block, before the government at Brussels could interfere to save 
them. One of these, Bertoul, had kept a gibbet in his house to remind him of 
the death which he expected. Ambrose was afterwards caught and hanged by 
the Estates for his treachery. 

Thus was the south lost to the cause of liberty. Flanders and Brabant were 
for some time to be disputed territories. In the north, Friesland, Overyssel, and 
Drenthe were weak and doubtful. Between these and North Brabant lay Gelder- 
land and Utrecht. Through the agency of Count John of Nassau, these were 



THB STORY OF OUR. CHRISTIANITY. 59 r 

firmly joined to Holland and Zealand in January, i 579 , by the Union of Utrecht 
Here, a little later, the glorious edifice of the Dutch Republic was to rise and 
remain, when the once rich and free cities of the south were given over to 
reaction and ruin, 

On one of the first clays of 1579 Parma took the fort of Carpen, near 



MONTALBAN'S TOWER, AMSTERDAM. 

Maestricht, and hanged the garrison and their captain, who had dealt the same 
fate to Philip's officer there a year before. On March 2d he attacked Antwerp, 
and was driven from beneath the vails, leaving four hundred dead. On March 
1 2th he laid siege to Maestricht. During this spring much negotiation went 



592 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

on among the Estates of the different provinces, and Orange did his best to hin- 
der the Walloons from deserting the national cause, but in vain. The question 
of religion not being at issue, Philip and his viceroy could promise whatever 
was asked by Hainault, Artois, and the rest — restoration of their ancient privi- 
leges and the removal of the foreign troops. To one who has no conscience, 
promises cost nothing ; and these were made only to be broken. 

EGMONT'S TREASON. 

On May 28th a Catholic festival caused a riot at Antwerp; some violence 
was done, and the priests were driven out of the city. They were recalled next 
day, on the remonstrance of Orange, who threatened to resign his posts if such 
conduct were allowed. A like disturbance took place at Utrecht. On June 4th, 
3^oung Egmont, who was still an officer of the States and had command of a 
regiment at Brussels, made himself notorious by an abortive attempt at treason. 
At dawn his men seized one of the gates, killed the guard stationed there, and 
took possession of the great square. This was all that he accomplished, for those 
whom he sent to take the palace were arrested, and he and his troops were soon 
prisoners in the square. The citizens rose, barricaded every street, and hurled 
insults at the traitor, asking him if he were looking for his father's head, which 
had been cut off in that place eleven years before. For twenty-four hours he and 
his regiment were kept there, abashed and starving. On the next day, the anni- 
versary of the elder Egmont's death, they were allowed to go, instead of being 
punished as they deserved. The count, after some useless lying and much dick- 
ering, formally entered the service of his father's murderer. In a former chap- 
ter it has been told how his life was ingloriously ended on the field of Ivry. 

Meantime Maestricht was vigorously besieged, on the most scientific 
principles. It had a population of thirty-four thousand, with several thousand 
refugees from the surrounding country, who were made to assist in the defense. 
The garrison consisted of a thousand men, and the burgher guard of twelve 
hundred. Orange did all he could to rouse the Estates in its behalf, but the 
response was scanty. He appointed the Huguenot La Noue to take command, but 
the city had been so closely invested from the start* that there was no getting in 
or out. It had strong walls and brave citizens, but these could not stand forever 
against Parma's cannon and twenty thousand veterans — a number gradually 
increased, as the siege went on, by full half as many more. The Bishop of 
Liege, anxious to help the most Catholic King, sent four thousand coal-miners, 
accustomed to working underground : on the other side the peasants, familiar 
with pick and spade, were employed in digging and countermining. 

SIEGE AND DEFENSE OF MAESTRICHT. 

Parma had built and fortified two bridges across the river. He first attacked 
the gate of Tongres, and after spending six thousand shots on the wall in that 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 593 

part, found that another of great strength had been erected within. The miners,, 
starting from a distance, approached this gate, and were met, to their sorrow, by 
the defenders beneath the surface. Women as well as men labored at this dark 
task, and had their companies and officers, called mine-mistresses. There were 
daily conflicts in these gloomy vaults : the assailants were encountered with boiling 
water, with fire and smoke, so that, after losing some hundreds, they were forced 
to give up their first mine. They dug another, beginning still further away, 
and, this time eluding the citizens, managed to blow up a part of the wall and its 
tower, so that the moat was filled. These ruins the Spaniards seized on April 3d, 
and by their means attempted to enter the city, but were not able. After a fierce 
battle, each party held its own. 

A new mine was prepared in this direction, and the gate of Bois-le-Duc, 
chosen as the second object of attack, was battered for two weeks. Having made 
these preparations, Parma ordered a general assault for April 8th. The Span- 
iards rushed to the breach, and were met by every conceivable weapon and the 
whole population of the town. The peasants wielded their flails with as terrible 
vigor as did the Taborites of Bohemia a hundred and fifty years before : women 
and children were armed with burning brands, pails of hot water, and tarred 
hoops to throw over the heads of their foes. Many hundreds had fallen, when 
a messenger appeared at each gate, shouting that the other had been carried. 
The lie inspired the assailants to renewed exertions, but did not appal the defend- 
ers. The explosion at the Tongres gate came, but not at the right spot and 
moment ; for once Parma's plans had gone amiss. Five hundred human forms 
went up, to fall mangled corpses — but they were those of Spaniards. Strange to 
say, not a townsman was hurt by this. Forty-five years later, an extraordinary 
relic was found far beneath the surface. Ortiz, a captain of engineers, had been 
blown up from the vault he had prepared, had fallen into it, and there been 
buried under the ruins. His bones were still "clad in complete armor, the helmet 
and cuirass sound, his gold chain around his neck, and his mattock and pick-axe 
at his feet " — the ghastly remains of one literally "hoist with his own petard." 

Even this frightful accident did not discourage the besiegers. They fought 
like the devils they were : the citizens resisted like men and women defending 
their homes and their lives. When four thousand of Parma's men, one-sixth of 
them officers, were killed or badly wounded, his lieutenants begged the general 
to stop the assault. He refused, and was for rushing into the thick of the fray 
himself. They tried to hold him back, but in vain, till one near him reminded 
him of the king's orders to exercise prudence as well as valor. If he fell, who 
could take his place ? He submitted with a frown, and the trumpets sounded 
the recall. Maestricht had beaten back the royal army. 

The siege now became a blockade. A complete wall, strengthened by six- 
teen forts, was built around the doomed city, and defied succor or interruption 




THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TAKING OF MAASTRICHT. 



594 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. c 95 

from without. Orange had with much difficulty raised a little army of seven 
thousand. Under his brother and Hohenlo, it marched to the relief of Maes- 
tricht, but soon saw that relief was impossible : the town could not be reached. 

DESPERATE HEROISM. 

The prince strove to obtain a truce, through the aid of a conference then 
in session at Cologne, but Parma's agent there had his instructions, and no truce 
could be had. The gate looting westward toward Brussels was next attacked. 
Here the townsmen had raised a fort with three walls. Under a steady cannonade 
and a fierce assault the fort and the three walls fell, and a thousand or more of 
the brave citizens fell with them. Their last defense was a demilune with a 
deep ditch, behind this gate, and a breastwork behind the demilune. This they 
resolved to hold with their last breath. The garrison, now reduced to four 
hundred men, few of them free from wounds, began to talk of surrender : but 
the burghers threatened them with death, and made them see that they had 
better die fighting than as traitors or prisoners. 

There was one coward in the heroic town : he escaped to the enemy, and 
revealed the condition of affairs within. The moat was wide and deep, but Parma 
bridged it under the guns of the demilune, and led the way and the dangerous 
work in person. He probably excused his rashness, and his disobedience to 
the king's commands, on the ground that his men would not perform so des- 
perate a task unless he were with them. Young Berlaymont, who had lately 
succeeded his father, and many other officers, fell at his side, but the viceroy 
seemed to bear a charmed life. If the town had possessed a marksman expert 
enough to pick off its worst foe, it might have been saved, and the Netherlands 
have had a different history. As it was, Parma stood there untouched till the 
bridge was finished and ten cannon drawn across it. 

The new battery began to play, a new mine was fired beneath the demi- 
lune, another furious assault was made on the ruins. Slowly the defenders, 
after prodigies of valor, were driven back and took refuge behind their breast- 
work. Here every man who could stand and strike made his post, not leaving 
it by day or night. Their wives and children brought them what was needed 
to sustain life. They ate and slept upon the ground — slept, alas, too soundly. 
All that was left for them was to strengthen their breastwork and hold it to 
the end. 

The end could not be far off : the city was past saving, unless by miracle. 
Yet when Parma, now sick of a fever, sent them a herald to praise their valor 
and urge them to surrender at discretion, they spurned the message. Soon 
after, a note from Orange reached them, no man knew how, promising help if 
they could hold out another fortnight — though none could guess how help might 
reach them, environed as they were by their enemies. 



596 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The value of this strange promise was not to be tested. Parma, indignant 
that his army made so little progress while he could not lead them, ordered an 
assault for June 29th, the day of St. Peter and St. Paul. The elder of these 
apostles, he said, would open the Brussels gates with his .key, the other would 
smite the heretics with his terrible sword. Not to ask too much c f heaven, a 
close watch was set that night upon the crumbling wall from without ; and as it 
proved, human means were quite sufficient to accomplish a task that would 
hardly have been congenial to glorified spirits. One of the guards, looking about 
him in the starlight, found a hole in the wall that had been overlooked by those 
inside. He easily made it larger, crawled through, and advancing cautiously, 
saw that Maestricht lay at the mercy of its foes. Its exhausted defenders were 
prone upon the ground ; the sentinels had fallen asleep like the rest ; not a 
creature but himself was stirring in the place. 

THE MASSACRE. 

It was quick work for the spy to return and tell his officers what he had 
seen, and for them to improve their opportunity. The tired burghers awaked 
too late, to find their foes upon them. Through the rest of that night, all the 
next day, and for two days more, the slaughter went on. Some six thousand 
were murdered, of whom more than a fourth, by the accounts of the murderers, 
were women. To escape a fate worse than death, some clasped their babies and 
sprang into the river Meuse, their only place of refuge. Every violence that 
human beings can practice on their fellows "was committed. When all was over, 
the survivors were driven away or allowed to leave. A great booty was taken. 
The town, which had been prosperous through its manufactures of cloth, was 
depopulated and ruined. Within the year, say the native historians, most of 
the buildings were destroyed, to furnish fuel for the soldiers and tramps who 
were the only residents. 

Tappin, who had conducted the defense with signal courage and ability, 
was not among the murdered ; he was taken prisoner, and soon died of his 
wounds. Parma's recovery was hastened by his success. He had himself 
carried into the city, through streets full of mutilated corpses, and into a church, 
where he gave thanks to the saints for a result which he profanely ascribed 
to their aid. Such was the Italian and Spanish idea of piety. 

Many blamed William the Silent as the cause of a misfortune which he had 
done all in his power to avert. Slanders against him were industriously circu- 
lated, aud one was sent to the assembly of the Estates. The clerk paused as 
soon as the character of the letter became apparent, and some cried out in anger, 
but Orange, who was presiding, insisted on reading the whole of it aloud himself. 
Then he said, as he had said before, that, if people took that view, he would 
retire from public life and leave the country, rather than have it injured by 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



597 



his means. There was but one answer to make to such a suggestion, and it was 
promptly and heartily made, as often elsewhere. Even- one in the land who had 
a sane head and a sound heart knew that the prince was above reproach and 
indispensable. 

TROUBLES AT GHENT. 

About this time his presence was again required at Ghent, where affairs 
were in a sad condition. The ranting preacher Dathenus, a demagogue and 
former monk, had, in William's 
own mild words, " been de- 
nouncing me as a man without 
religion or fidelity and full of 
ambition, with other state- 
ments hardly becoming his 
cloth, which I do not 
think it worth while to 
answer, further than 
that I willingly refer 
myself to the j udgment 
of all who know me." 
This he cared little for, 
though aware that fool- 
ish noises may disturb 
and pervert unsettled 
minds. But Dathenus' 
friend, Imbize, had 
gained undue power in 
the city, and become 
much too active in stir- 
ring up disorder and 
sedition. As far back 
as March, the mob, at 
his instigation, had been 
abusing and plundering 
Catholics, conduct 
which drew a sharp 
reproof from Orange. 
Afterthis Imbize joined 
Dathenus in heaping 
loud and vile abuse upon the prince, whom he called a traitor, a disguised Papist, 
and so on. On July 25th this man arrested such of the magistrates and chief 
citizens as were not to his mind, set up a government of his own, and allowed 




AI.EXA.VDKR FARNESE, PRINCE OF PAKMA. 
From a portrait in the gallery "J Versa*!!- < 



598 < •. THE STORY OF OUR' CHRISTIANITY: 

Dathenus' to issue a pamphlet j stating that these measures were meant to hinder 
" the traitor" from coming to Ghent and bringing again his abominable "relig- 
ious peace," which was merely a contrivance in the interest of popish abuses and 
Spanish tyranny. 

Folly like this, when it passes' from private words to public deeds, requires 
to be< attended to. Orange repaired to Ghent, where he easily overturned the 
new mockfgovernment, and saw that an election was properly held. The con- 
spiracy collapsed before him, and the chief conspirators made haste to run away. 
Imbize was dragged from his hiding-place by one of his own followers, received 
a lecture from the man he had denounced and defied, and was agreeably sur- 
prised to find that he was not to be hanged. He and Dathenus soon joined 
Duke Casimir in Germany, and remained to enjoy the society of that congenial 
mind: they were never missed at home. Orange, having pacified Ghent, con- 
sented to add to his other responsibilities a post he had several times declined, 
that of Governor of Flanders. 

MORE OFFERS TO ORANGE. 

He had already neglected another opportunity to enrich himself. Respon- 
sible tools of the king, who dared not make their offers to the great rebel's face, 
sounded his friends and relatives. He could have anything, everything — his 
son, his old estates, payment of all his debts and past expenses, which were huge, 
and even liberty to worship as he pleased ; if he preferred to leave the country, 
a million beyond all this. A German noble pledged his honor that these were 
not even r -day Spanish promises, made to be broken, but should ht kept to the 
letter. If the terms were not high enough, what would his Excellency have? 
Let him only name his price. Unfortunately for Philip, he had no price : his 
ambition was not of that familiar kind. He said to the States-General, "They 
claim that I am the cause of this war. You can judge of that. If I am in the 
way of peace, I can get out of the way. It may be best to select some one else 
to guide your affairs. If so, I will serve him loyally." It seems as clear in his 
case as in that of Washington that his was no vulgar and selfish ambition. 
These are the two historic names that stand, above all others, for pure and 
undiluted patriotism. 

We need not burden our pages with the tedious and useless deliberations of 
the Cologne Congress. It sat from May to November, 1579, nominally in the 
interest of peace, exchanged a vast number of compliments, arguments, and 
writings, and consumed an immense quantity of solid and liquid substance. 
Thus we are told that the Bishop of Wurtzburg (we may hope with the aid of his 
household) swallowed "eighty hogsheads of Rhenish wine and twenty great 
casks of beer." These proceedings cost the Netherlands a good deal of money, 
an'd brought them no advantage whatever. They demanded, as hitherto, that 



THE STORY OE OUR CHRISTIANITY. 599 

the foreign troops should go, that all confiscated property be restored, that the 
union and status of 1576 be recognized, that offices be held by natives only, and 
that the Reformed and Lutheran services be permitted wherever then held. 
Philip's envovs, of course, insisted on absolute obedience to him and the exclu- 
sion of all worship but that of Rome. The secret orders of the States included 
one significant passage : "The new religion has taken too deep root ever to be 
torn out, except by destroying the country. " A hint of what was coming was 
given in the open threat that, -unless peace were soon made, "the States would 
declare the king fallen from his sovereignty. n These bold sentences bear the 
mark of Orange and the thorough patriots. As we know, all were not of this 
stamp. After the Congress had adjourned, Aerschot and four other deputies 
lingered to make their own terms with tyranny. 

TWO TRAITORS. 

Another defection had already occurred. De Bours, who had rendered good 
service at Antwerp, was now governor of Mechlin. Here he was corrupted by a 
monk named Peter Lupus, who hoped to be made Bishop of Namur. The two 
stole and melted a famous silver shrine, worth seventy thousand guilders, whioh 
had been spared when the churches were sacked eight years before. De Bours 
gave up the city to Parma for a bribe, and lived two years to enjoy his ill-gotten 
gains. Mechlin was recovered in six months, and friar Lupus killed in the streets, 
fighting like a layman and a desperado. 

A more important and lamentable treason was that of Count Renneberg, 
Governor of Friesland. He was an accomplished gentlemen, a brother of the 
late Hoogstraten, and entirely trusted by Orange ; yet he too sold himself to 
Parma for so much cash down, a pension, and other material advantages. His 
plot was for some time suspected, and was carried out only by the basest lying. 
On March 4 th, 1580, he seized Groningen for the king. The burgomaster, Hilde- 
brandt, whom he had assured of his affection and fidelity but the night before, 
was shot down at his feet while trying to suppress the revolt. 

This perfidy did not carry the province over, but only its capital city, which 
was at once besieged by Hohenlo, acting for the States. Among his chief officers 
• was Entes, one of the captors of Brill, who had amassed wealth by privateering 
or piracy. This man lost his life on May 17th in a drunken attempt to take 
Groningen singlehanded. Hohenlo, though of a great family, was not of much 
higher character than Entes; but Orange had to use such materials as he 

could get. 

Parma sent Martin Shenck to raise the siege of Groningen. Hohenlo 
moved south to meet him. The States' army was feeble both in numbers and in 
quality, and its general, who, according to a contemporary, was "by life and 
manners fitter to drive swine than to govern oious and honorable men," knew no 



6oo 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY 



better than to attack a superior force when his troops were exhausted by a forced 
inarch of twelve or fifteen hours and faiuting with thirst. The action took place 
on June i6th,on Hardenburg Heath, near Coewerden in the province of Drenthe. 
Within an hour the patriots were slain or scattered, and young William Louis 
of Nassau, son of Count John, had received a wound which lamed him for life. 

After this sad affair the north was in hopeless confusion. The traitor Ren- 
neberg kept his post as stadtholder for the king, but neither side had strength 




A DUTCH FISHERMAN AT AN TTNFAMILrAR TASK. 



enough to accomplish much. "A small war now succeeded, with small generals, 
small armies, small campaigns, small sieges." Bands of ruined peasants, calling 
themselves "desperates," roamed about with a broken egg for their emblem, and 
did great damage in the open country. Much to the discomfort of Orange, John 
of Nassau threw up the government of Gelderland. He had spent huge sums 
and loaded himself with debt in the cause of liberty, and his reward was, as he 
said, to be "fed with annoyance from a spoon. 1 ' He had not his brother's fund 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 6ot 

of patience, and his plain mind and warm temper were worn out by the petty 
quarrels and invincible meanness of the local authorities. His quarters and 
supplies were as poor as those of Henry of Navarre at his worst straits, a little 
later. He was nearly frozen in the winter; the States would not pay the baker, 
who refused to furnish any more bread. "The cook has often no meat to roast," 
he wrote, " so that we have to go to bed hungry." It may be well that princes 
should sometimes taste the experience of paupers, but not through their generous 
fidelity to the people's cause. So Count John resigned his post before the sum- 
mer ended, retired to Germany, and took a second wife. 

Orange could find comfort only in his patient faith. " One must do his best," 
he wrote, "and believe that when such misfortunes come, God desires to prove 
us. But for this, we would never have pierced the dykes, for it was an uncertain 
thing and a great sorrow to the poor people ; yet God blessed the enterprise, and 
He will bless us still." He was deep in debt, having spent over two million 
florins for the provinces, and so pressed by his creditors that he thought of mak- 
ing over to them the remnant of his estates. He could not blame his brother, 
for he owed Count John more than half a million. One way to wealth and ease 
had been open, but it was a way he could not take. The cause for which he had 
lost and endured so much was dearer to him than life. 

ORANGE UNDER THE BAN. 

He was now formally under the ban, with a price upon his head, His old ■ 
enemy, Cardinal Granvelle, had long advised Philip to take this step, pretendiug 
that it would so frighten the prince as to unsettle his wits if not end his life. 
The shameful document was prepared in March, 1580, and published in June. 
It blamed Orange for all that had gone amiss, called him "an enemy of the 
human race," incited the general world to rise against him, and offered to any 
who might be "sufficiently generous of heart to rid us of this pest, delivering 
him to us alive or dead, or taking his life," twenty-five thousand crowns, a patent 
of nobility, and pardon for any previous crime. 

The ban had no particular effect, except to set forth in a glaring light the 
moral code of Spain and Rome, and to stimulate the greed of assassins. These 
had been on William's track for years. As he said in his reply, "I am in the 
hand of God; my worldly goods and my life have long been dedicated to His 
service. He will dispose of them as seems best for His glory and my salvation." 
He justified his course and that of the provinces in the rebellion, set forth the 
purity of his motives by stating familiar facts, and paid his compliments to 
Philip -in plain round terms. The Netherlands knew no king, he said ; there was 
one in Spain, who was no more than duke and count in the provinces; therefore 
he and his associates were no rebels. He quoted Demosthenes against Philip 
of Macedon, that "the strongest fortress of a free people against a tyrant is 



6o2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

distrust." He made light of the price set upon his head as no new. thing. Far 
from being frightened to death, as Philip and his adviser affected to expect, he 
cared so little for the ban that he took his time about answering it. Six months 
elapsed before his "Apology" was read before the States-General at Delft, on 
December 13th. It was soon translated into various languages, sent to every 
sovereign in Europe, and widely circulated. Its boldness roused misgivings in 
his friends. Saint Aldegonde, who was in France when he read it, said, "Now is 
the prince a dead man." But he had long been doomed. The sword of Damo- 
cles had hung over his head since 1567, and it was sure to fall sooner or later. 
During this year (1580) the States lost the valuable services of La Noue, 
who was captured in a skirmish. They offered Egmont and another prisoner of 
rank in exchange, but Parma refused to "give a lion for two sheep." The 
Huguenot's life was spared only from the fear, or rather the certainty, of reprisals 
in kind. He was kept long in the castle of Limburg, where he wrote several 
works of repute. Great efforts were made to obtain his release, which Philip 
offered to grant if he were first blinded. He was at length exchanged for 
Egmont in 1585. 

END OF RENNEBERG. 

Toward the end of the year, Renneberg, with seven thousand men, besieged 
the small town of Steenwyk, in the northwest corner of Overyssel, not far from 
the Zuyder Zee. It was defended by a garrison of nine hundred, under the 
brave and efficient Coruput. Redhot cannon balls, a recent invention from Poland, 
were here used for the first time in Dutch history, and did much damage. Some 
of the people murmured and wished to surrender, but the captain called them 
"gabbling geese," and told a butcher, who asked what they would eat when the 
meat was gone, that he should be eaten first. Renneberg, whose character had 
sadly changed with the loss of self-respect, played off coarse jokes on the 
besieged, and sent them a pretended letter from Orange to Alencon, which said 
that religion was of no account in politics, and that any prince, once firm in the 
saddle, could order it as he liked. This stupid forgery, obvious enough to any 
who knew the character and sentiments of the liber.ator, failed to alarm the citi- 
zens. Letters, assuring them that relief was at hand, were enclosed in hollow 
balls and fired into the town. On February 2 2d, 1581, the English Colonel 
Norris appeared with six thousand men and a store of provisions, and put an end 
to the siege. 

Near five months later, Norris and Sonoy overthrew the royalist army of 
the North. Its commander was on his death-bed, writhing in remorse, cursing 
his treason, and refusing to see the sister who had prompted it. After his death, 
which occurred on July- 23d, his body was opened, and his heart found to be 
"shrivelled to the size of a walnut." His fate, as that of one who, capable of 
better things, turned deliberate!}- to the worse, afforded an impressive lesson, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 603 

but one which the traitor nobles of the south had not conscience enough to profit 
by. The Spaniards said that he died of shame at failing to earn his heavy 
bribe. The friends he had betrayed remembered his early promise, and cast the 
mantle of charity over his crime. 




A FISH KR MAX' 3 CHILD. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



INDEPENDENCE. 



HE summer of 1581 was marked by several 
notable events and one of great im- 
portance. The services of the Church 
of Rome were prohibited in Brussels, 
Antwerp, Utrecht, and several cities of 
Holland. This intolerance was not to 
the mind of Orange, but he could not 
check it at the time, and the step was 
not without its excuses/ Some of the 
clergy, as we have seen, were active 
agents of Philip and Parma, and most 
of them had more zeal than discretion. 
The feeling was almost universal among the Protestants, 
that a priest was by virtue of his office the foe of liberty. 
Some friars in the capital made themselves so obnoxious 
that the magistrates were moved to expose the tricks by 
which the superstitions of the ignorant were wrought 
upon. "They charged that bits of lath were daily 
exhibited as fragments of the cross ; that the bones 
of dogs and monkeys were held up for adoration as those of saints ; and that 
oil was poured habitually into holes drilled in the heads of statues, that the 
populace might believe in their miraculous sweating." These impostures enraged 
the Calvinists, and produced continual danger of collision and riot. From the 
modern point of view, it is lamentable that any kind of religious meetings should 
be interfered with : but religion three hundred years ago was apt to be closely 
intermixed with politics. All that was done was to suppress the Romish wor- 
ship for the time in certain places. There was no meddling with private con- 
science, no forcing people to attend services they disliked. 

Philip, with his usual wrongheadedness, conceived the notion that his sister 
Margaret of Parma had been so popular in the Netherlands that they would be 
glad to have her back; whereas the fact was that she had simply been less 
offensive and less hated than her successors. Accordingly he sent her there to 
be regent again, restricting her son to the command of the army. Alexander 
(604) 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 605 

was the very ast man to submit to such an arrangement, or bear a divided 
authority. On his mother's arrival in August, he told her that the plan would 
not work ; one of them must resign. She meekly submitted, aud asked to be 
recalled. The king was obliged to consent, and to confirm Farnese in his full 
powers. The duchess, at her brother's express desire, remained for two years in 
the southern provinces, living privately under another name. 

THE KING DISOWNED. 

By the formal declaration of the national will, any representative of Philip 
was now a mere intruder in the Netherlands. On July 26th the Estates, meet- 
ing at the Hague, renounced their allegiance in a solemn "Act of Abjuration." 
The preamble of this document was conceived in the spirit, not of democracy, 
but of constitutional monarch}'. "All mankind know that a prince is appointed 
of God to cherish his subjects, as a shepherd 10 guard his sheep. Therefore 
when the prince does not fulfil his duty as protector, when he oppresses his sub- 
jects, destroys their ancient liberties, and treats them as slaves, he is to be 
regarded not as a sovereign, but as a tyrant. As such the Estates of the land 
may lawfully and reasonably depose him and elect another in his place." The 
Act went on, in language of studied moderation, to set firth the king's misdeeds 
and the long patience of his subjects; it ended by disowning his title and repu- 
diating his authority. 

An oath was framed three days later, by which all citizens were to bind 
themselves to "renounce the King of Spain, and not to respect, obey, or recog- 
nize " him, but to swear fidelity to the United Provinces (Brabant, Flanders, 
Holland, Zealand, Gelderland, and the rest) and to their National Council, estab- 
lished in January preceding. 

A MAN WHO WOULD NOT BE KING. 

Thus was the Dutch republic born ; and yet it was not meant to be a repub- 
lic. That idea was cherished by few minds, and had been brought into disrepute 
by the excesses of Ryhove and Imbize at Ghent. The provincials were conserv- 
ative in temper and opinions, law-abiding, opposed to needless change. They 
wished simply to maintain their ancient charters: they still respected royalty — 
but royalty under conditions. They needed a head, a ruler ; the question was, 
who should he be ? In our view, and in that of many of his countrymen at the 
time, Orange was the man; the man singularly fitted by ability, experience, and 
character for the difficult post ; the only possible ruler of the free Netherlands. 
But Orange himself stood in the way of this. The chief defect of his noble 
nature was an excessive scrupulousness, a modest desire to keep himself and his 
personal interests in the background. Had he been less loftily disinterested, 
more open to the promptings of common ambition, it might have been better for 



606 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

his country. He shrank from no labor, no peril, no loss, in the public service, 
but he would not have the sovereignty. Fraternal pride may have led John of 
Nassau to exaggerate in saying that William was " daily and without intermis- 
sion implored to give his consent ; " but he knew his brother's motives, and but 
one exception can be taken to the statement that "he refuses only on this 
account — that it may not be thought that, instead of religious freedom for the 
country, he has been seeking his private advancement and a kingdom for himself." 




A STREET SCENE IN AMSTERDAM. 

The exception lies in the word "only." Regard for his reputation was not 
and could not be the only nor the chief consideration with the prince in regard to 
anything affecting the public welfare. But he feared injury to that welfare from 
the jealousies of which he was the constant object, and which would be heated to 
tenfold fury if he became the ruler of the land. " It seems to me," he said, " that 
I was born in this bad planet that all I do might be misinterpreted." He was 
ready to die, ready to resign and retire, but not to do anything that might hurt 
the cause. Again, and still more : he felt that the provinces could not win their 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 607 

battle alone. Foreign aid was an absolute necessity, and no more of it was to 
be had from German}'. He prized the alliance of England, and coveted that of 
France. Now the Dnke of Anjon, called throughout this volume by his earlier 
title of Aleucon, was the brother of Henry III. and the favorite of Elizabeth. 
On this account, and not from any special esteem or affection for the man ( for 
which indeed there was little ground), William steadily urged the claims of 
Alencon as the most, indeed the only, available candidate for such sovereignty 
as "the Netherlands were able and willing to confer. 

ALENCON AS A CANDIDATE. 

It is easy to oe wise after the fact, and to see that this selection was a great 
mistake. If statesmen were required to be infallible, so grave a blunder would 
be a sad blot on the prince's fame. But, as Motley points out, the evidence was 
not all in at that time ; the moral could not be accurately drawn till a little later, 
when the man and the facts were much better known. Alencon was not without 
abilities, and had the gift of making a good impression. Saint Aldegonde, one 
of the most accomplished men of the time, had a long talk with him in Paris, 
and was so completely deceived that he described the duke as a model of all the 
virtues, and praised particularly his sincerity and his earnest wish to free the 
Netherlands. "If we fail to secure him," he wrote, "posterity will regret it with 
bitter tears for ten centuries." Honest error could hardly go farther than that. 

Others held a different opinion, and urged it with numerous and weighty 
arguments. Orange answered by pleading the necessity of the case. What else 
could be done ? Nothing but wait for the right ruler to turn up ; and you 
might as well ask a hungry man to go on starving, in hope of a banquet by and by. 
The provinces were in that position, and must take such food as they could get. 

It was not the fault of Orange that his hopes from this quarter were bitterly 
disappointed. The French court eagerly promoted the negotiations ; Catherine 
de Medicis longed to see her fourth son on a throne, and Henry made large 
promises of aid to his brother's subjects. Still the matter dragged. As 
John of Nassau wrote, "The provinces are coming into the arrangement very 
unwillingly." Holland and Zealand positively refused to come into it at all : 
they would have no sovereign but their own prince. Seeing that nothing else 
could be done here, he on July 5th accepted the post, with a reservation of his 
own inserting as to time. On July 24th, two days before the declaration of inde- 
pendence by the Estates-General, he was installed with Philip's title of Count. 
The change from his former office of governor was rather nominal than real, and 
added something to his dignity but nothing to his powei . 

Soon after this Aleneon entered the provinces from the southwest, with twelve 
thousand foot and five thousand horse, the latter mostly men of rank, out for a holi- 
day excursion. His appearance had the effect of relieving Cambray, a city now 



608 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

well inside the French border, which Parma had commenced to besiege. Having 
furnished it with the necessary supplies, and learned that the country was not 
yet quite ready for him, he went to England to continue his flirtation with 
Elizabeth. l On October ist Parma laid siege to Tournay, in the western end of 
Hainault. It was bravely defended by the Princess of Epinoy, in the absence 
of her husband ; but no relief came, and the people had not the spirit of those 
in Maestrieht. The usual monk corrupted the garrison, the Catholics mutinied, 
and the Protestants preferred surrender to sack. At the end of November the 
princess gained honorable terms, and retired with her garrison, her property, and 
a great reputation, while the citizens got off cheaply with a fine of a hundred 
thousand crowns. This was the last military operation of the year 1581. In 
October the Archduke Matthias, who had been a harmless figurehead, went back 
to Vienna with the promise of a pension. 

THE NEW SOVEREIGN. 

Meantime all eyes were fixed on what was going on, or expected to occur, 
in England. The proceedings of the ro3 r al lovers were sufficiently foolish, but 
they still have a place in history, and they deluded everybody at the time. In 
order to mount a throne higher than that of the States, Alencon would no doubt 
have been glad to marry a woman old enough to be his mother. El zabeth had 
different intention^ ; but she loved to flavor her political intrigues with mature 
coquetry, and to keep on good terms with France she stooped to return the bland- 
ishments of a youth whose looks were far below the average. Saint Aldegoiide, 
again sure of what was not, informed Orange in November that the marriage 
was agreed upon. Urged by the prince, the reluctant Estates sent envoys across 
to make final arrangements with the Frenchman. The queen, still keeping up 
the pretense of an affection she could hardly feel, sent Leicester and other great 
lords with him as a body-guard (the young Sir Philip Sidney was among them), 
and ordered her Dutch allies to treat him "as if he were her second self." 

The brilliant party landed at Flushing on February 10th, 1582, and were 
met by Orange and other dignitaries. A week later he took the requisite oaths 
which were stringent enough to make the liberties "of the provinces secure, so 
far as that could be done by words ; but Alencon had been brought up in a 
school where princes' vows sat lightly on their elastic consciences. Having done 
this, he was conducted into Antwerp, and solemnly installed as Duke of Brabant 
with much speech-making and any amount of ceremonious festivity. No one 
noticed the farcical element of these proceedings. England and France were at 
peace with Spain ; yet leading nobles of both, with the hearty approval of both 
sovereigns, were setting up a ruler over what Philip still claimed as part of his 
dominions. Worse yet to logical minds and observant eyes, the son of Catherine 
de Medicis, the brother of Henry III., backed by these instigators of the St. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



609 



Bartholomew massacre, was pledging himself to defend Protestant freedom. But 
it was not to last. 

ATTEMPTED MURDER OF ORANGE. 

A month later, on March 1 8th, the prince was still at Antwerp, and had been 
entertaining company at dinner. As they passed through the hall, a stranger 




DITCH COURTSHIP ON THE ISLE OF WAI.CHERHX. 



610 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

of low condition handed him a paper, and then fired a pistol at such close range 
that his beard and hair were set on fire, and the wound so cauterized (the sur- 
geon said) as to hinder his bleeding to death at once. The bullet went through 
lis neck and mouth from right to left. He was dazed, but kept his feet, and 
fancied for a moment that the walls had fallen. Then realizing that he was 
wounded, he called out, "Don't kill him: I forgive him my death. The duke 
loses a faithful servant in me." The assassin had been at once cut down. 
Orange was helped to his room and received immediate attention, but there 
seemed little prospect of saving his invaluable life. 

The news flew through the city, and caused a terrible commotion. The 
wildest rumors, the most fearful suspicions, were abroad. Who had planned 
the crime? Was it the strangers? Was it this new duke? Was it the two 
gentlemen who had slain the murderer, perhaps to remove his evidence against 
themselves ? A little later, and all the Frenchmen might have been massa- 
cred. 

It was young Maurice, afterwards the greatest general of his age and the 
main prop of Dutch liberty, who took the first steps to bring the truth to light. 
He was but fifteen, and had just seen his father shot, it was supposed fatally; 
but he took his post over the mangled corpse of the assassin, "pierced in thirty- 
two vital places," directed a thorough search, and examined the papers found 
in the pockets. Every line, every word, was Spanish. This intelligence was 
at once sent out, and removed many frightful thoughts and all danger of violence. 
It was Aleneon's birthday, and there was to be a great banquet that night. Men 
remembered the Paris of 1572, the nuptials of Navarre, and were ready for ven- 
geance on any seeming provocation. 

Maurice went to his father, who believed that his end was near. "Alas, poor 
prince!" he cried; "what troubles will now beset thee ! " When the surgeons 
forbade him to speak, he wrote to the States-General, begging them to be faithful 
to their new ruler. Saint Aldegonde now took charge of the articles stained by 
the assassin's blood. He was a humane and cultivated man, fitted, like his great 
friend, for a later age rather than his own; and his rage must have almost turned 
to pity at the sight of these lamentable marks of a crawling and perverted mind. 
There was indeed a hidden dagger, and there were bills of exchange for near 
three thousand crowns, the evident wages of the crime, paid in advance ; but the 
rest were instruments of ether recognized Romish devotion or the basest super- 
stition. Besides a crucifix, a Jesuit catechism, and the like, there were two dried 
toads, and prayers to all the saints the poor wretch had ever heard of, including 
"the Saviour's son," for success in what he considered a pious enterprise. There 
were also vows to fast a week after its accomplishment, to buy "a new coat of 
costly pattern " for the Lord and a new gown for His Mother, with a list of other 
offerings, which would have gone far to exhaust his three thousand crowns. How 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



611 



lie expected to get off safe was also made clear ; a cloud from heaven was to shut 
him in and darken the eyes of his foes. 

THE MURDEROUS PLOT. 

The whole vile conspiracy was soon unravelled. Anastro, a Spanish merchant 
of Antwerp, being nearly bankrupt, had thought to retrieve his fortunes by blood- 
money. Wanting a much higher rate than that offered by the ban, he made a 
compact with Philip, 
who was to pay him 
eighty thousand ducats 
for taking the libera- 
tor's life. The thrifty 
trader preferred to save 
at once his skin and 
most of his earnings ; 
so he took his cashier 
and chaplain into his 
confidence, and then 
left the city. These 
men employed a poor 
and densely ignorant 
servant to do the deed. 
Strange to say, the 
monk was less guilty 
than his accomplice; 
but both confessed, and 
were executed on March 
28th, tortures being 
omitted at the earnest 
request of Orange, who 
riated all barbarity as 
much as we do. Anas- 
tro escaped the hang- 
man for that time at 
least, and claimed his 
pay from Parma, who 
believed his tale, and 
on the strength of it JAN SIX BrRGOMASTER OF Amsterdam. 

invited the provinces to return to their allegiance, since they were now " relieved 
-of their tyrant and their betrayer." It is needless 1 1 say that they took another 




6i2 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

view of the matter, and that this new taste of Spanish manners did not improve 
their feelings toward the king. 

Orange did not die, though long in danger. At a crisis in his illness, his. 
life was saved by the skill of Alencon' s physician ; and this was the chief service 
which the French rendered to the Netherlands. On May 2d he was able to go 
to church to give thanks for his escape ; then, as throughout his illness, he had 
every sign of sympathy and affection from the people. Three days later his wife 
died of a fever brought on by anxiety during the three weeks following the 
attempt upon his life. She was a gifted and lovable woman, and had enabled 
him to forget the unhappiness of his previous domestic venture. She left six 
daughters, but no son. In the summer his countship was made permanent, and 
the old constitution of Holland was replaced by a new and freer one. 

In July another attempt was made upon his life, in which that of Alencon 
also was involved. The latter was being installed at Bruges as Count of West 
Flanders, when two men, an Italian and a Spaniard, tried to poison both, and 
confessed that Parma had employed them for the purpose. One of the knaves 
committed suicide in prison ; the other was sent to Paris and torn by horses. 
Young Egmont, to his lasting disgrace, was concerned in this murderous plot. 
In August, while similar proceedings were being conducted at Ghent, Parma's 
men attacked those of Alencon, and were beaten with considerable loss under 
the city walls. 

ACTIVITY OF PARMA. 

Philip's governor was active in other directions during the year 1582. On 
July 5th, after a siege of several months, he took Oudenarde in the southern 
part of Flanders, and exacted but thirty thousand crowns, for his mother had 
been born there. The place had been defended with spirit, and one incident of 
the siege brought out the general's character in a peculiarly grim way. He was 
dining in the trenches with his staff and several eminent guests, when two can- 
non balls from the ramparts killed three of the company, and wounded at least 
one more. The survivors rose in horror, for the blood and brains of their friends 
were mixed with the dishes — all but Parma, who kept his seat unmoved, called 
for a fresh table-cloth, and insisted that the meal should be finished. Such was 
the man who was gripping the life out of the southern and central provinces, and 
meant to reduce the north too. He failed to take Lochem in Gelderland, which 
was relieved in time, but succeeded at Steenwyk, where Renneberg had been 
repulsed a few months earlier. Before winter he had sixty thousand troops, 
whose wages amounted to near eight million florins a year. Philip, having 
accomplished the conquest of Portugal by Alva's means, had now more time and 
money to spend on the Netherlands than of late ; yet at the siege of Ninove the 
starving army ate nearly all their horses. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



613 



no 



The Walloon provinces had submitted on the express condition that 
foreign soldiers should be brought in ; but this Parma easily set aside, whether 
with or without the consent of the Estates— for this was a small item to a 
tyrant's will. 



A 



' mMMikM 




CHAPTER XL. 



A KNAVE AND A MARTYR. 



LHNCON, to all outward appearance, had been behaving tolerably 
well since his arrival. But the restraints of decency and law 
sickened him ; he was tired of a limited position and 
the moral ascendancy of Orange. Toward the end 
of the year he was joined by many French nobles, 
some of them men of eminence, but chiefly young 
rufflers and roues, of the same class with his brother's 
"mignons." These easily persuaded him that the 
oaths he had taken were of no consequence and should 
be cast aside ; what was the use of being heir to the 
throne of France and sovereign of the Netherlands, 
except to join the smaller country to the larger, grasp 
at absolute power, and be free to amuse himself as he 
pleased? He lent a ready ear to these base counsels, 
and secretly entered on a plot to destroy the liberties 
he had sworn to cherish, and for which he had often 
professed himself ready to shed the last drop of his 
blood. In the midst of this conspiracy he offered a 
solemn prayer for the success of his enterprise, and 
registered a vow to lead a life of chastity ever after, 
if his petition were granted. One is continually 
driven to pause in amazement at the strange ideas of religion which these men 
entertained. 

Preparations were carefully made by sending away a high officer who was 
faithful to Orange, and fomenting quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens 
in certain towns. On January 15th, 1583, Ostend and Dunkirk on the coast, 
and Alost and a few other places in the interior, were seized by the duke's accom- 
plices. They failed to get possession of Bruges, which had been left till a day later. 
At Antwerp, which the leading criminal reserved for his own share in this series 
of exploits, a mysterious warning was given by a Frenchman who had not 
wholly parted with his conscience. Suspicions were aroused, and two deputa- 
tions, one of them accompanied by Orange, waited on their sovereign. He 

played the part of injured innocence, assured them vehemently of his faithful 

(614) 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 615 

affection, and indignantly denied the least intention of doing what he was just 
about to do. Having promised not to leave the city on that day (January 17th), 
he sent to ask William to ride with him to the camp outside the walls. Had the 
prince consented, he would doubtless have been imprisoned, perhaps murdered. 
Instead of going, he begged the duke, through the messenger, to keep his 
promise. Toward one o'clock the traitor rode out of the Kipdorp gate with 
three hundred horsemen, whom he presently ordered back, saying, "There is 
your city; go and take it." Then he went on to the camp to send the rest. 

THE FRENCH FURY AT ANTWERP. 

The direction of this scoundrelly affair was left to Count Rochepot, one of 
the body-guard. He, pretending to have hurt his leg, stabbed the captain of the 
watch, who came out to help him. The burghers who kept the gate were cut 
down by those whom they regarded as friends, and the three hundred troopers 
galloped into the city, shouting for Anjou and the mass. Those from the camp 
came almost on their heels, six hundred more horse and three thousand foot. 
The amazed citizens, roused from their dinners by the noise, were saluted by 
shots and cries of ''The town is ours ! Hurrah for the mass ! Kill, kill !" It was 
the Spanish Fury over again, and without notice for defense. 

But it was not to end like the Spanish Fury. Antwerp had endured one 
massacre, and was not minded to endure another. The people knew they must 
rely on their own stout arms and brave hearts. There were no cowardly Wal- 
loon regiments now to run away, no Germans of Van Ende to join in pillaging 
and slaughtering those they were hired to defend. Nor were the Frenchmen so 
familiar with this sort of business, or so skilful at it, as the Spaniards. After 
killing a few, they scattered in search of plunder, favoring especially the gold- 
smiths' shops, of which their officers had taken note before. 

The town was presently in arms. A baker, naked at his oven, came forth with 
his bread-shovel, struck down a French cavalier, seized his horse and sword, and 
taking no thought or time to array himself for the streets, earned public thanks 
and a pension by rousing his neighbors and leading them to the fight. They 
came forth with a good will, every class of them, with their accustomed tools or 
weapons in their hands. The streets were barricaded, the invaders caught in 
a trap. Men used silver buttons from their jackets, gold coins from their pockets, 
for balls to load and fire with ; women threw down tiles and furniture from 
roofs and windows on the cowering robbers. They turned to fly, but it was far 
less easy to escape than it had been to enter. The city they had come to spoil 
became their graveyard or their prison. Much of the best blood of France 
(counting by birth— the worst, if esteemed by deeds) was shed that day. Two 
hundred and fifty nobles, and near two thousand commoners, lay dead in the 
streets. Rochepot killed a dozen of his men in vainly trying to stop their flight. 



6i6 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 




The Kipdorp gate was choked with corpses. The whole affair was over in about 
an hour, with a loss to the city of a scant hundred lives. 

Hundreds of the French were taken, and but few escaped. The wretched 
duke had remained outside, awaiting the event. When he saw some of his men 
jumping from the ramparts into the moat, he cried out exultantly that the 
burghers were being thrown down to death ; but he soon discovered his mistake. 

His most distinguished 
visitors, who were no 
parties to the plot, 
freely expressed their 
indignation and dis- 
gust. Marshal Birou, 
whose two sons were 
winning disgrace and 
perhaps death within 
the wall, cursed him 
in good round terms. 
The Dukes of Mont- 
pensier and Rochefou- 
cauld said that they 
were gentlemen, and 
not used to such meth- 
ods of making war. 

AN AWKWARD 
SITUATION. 

Orange lived at the 
other end of the city, 
and knew nothing of 
the affair till it was 
nearly over. When he 
arrived at the wall, the 
triumphant citizens 
Were firing their heavy 
guns at what was left 
of their recent allies. 
lis he stopped at once. It was a victory for them and for the moment ; but the 
situation was most embarrassing and threatening for him and for the country. 

The defeated schemer retired to the southwest, meeting a new disaster on 
his way. The people of Mechlin, having heard of his doings, cut a dyke and 
flooded the country, so that he lost another thousand of his troops. When he 







^fP 



PRINCE MAURICE OF NASSAU. 
From portrait in the Gallerie Ristorique, Versailles. 




THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 017 

had got to a safe distance, he wrote back, demanding the property he had left 
in Antwerp, the prisoners, and supplies for his remaining force. Orange, for 
prudence's sake, would have complied ; but the duke's subsequent letters pre- 
sented such a combination of impudence, falsehood, and self-contradiction, as to 
defeat his purpose. He complained of ingratitude, indignities, insults : what 
had occurred was an accident, or if by his order, the fault was theirs who had 
provoked him : he was willing to forgive, but he must have more power in the 
future, and his subjects must trust him more thoroughly. Would Orange kindly 
arrange the matter ? 

It was difficult to treat with such a man as this. Orange answered him, 
frankly and sadly, that his position had been damaged by his own deeds: he must 
take a different tone, if he wished any good to come of their future relations. 
To this the duke had nothing to say. 

The question of right or wrong was simple enough ; but unluckily this was 
not the only element in the problem to be solved. To thinking men Alen?on 
was of importance only as representing the alliance with France and England: 
if these powerful neighbors became enemies, the case of the provinces was hope- 
less. France, of course, would resent any apparent injury or affront offered to 
her heir-presumptive : the queen-mother promptly wrote in terms of scarcely dis- 
guised threat. To avert this danger was the first necessity and the difficult 
task of the liberator. To the Estates, who asked him for counsel, he replied 
that he was safe to be blamed, whatever advice he gave, but that three courses 
were open : to submit to Philip, to make terms with the duke, or to fight it out 
by themselves. The first was out of the question, as all knew. The last would 
suit him best, if they were strong enough, which they were not. It remained 
only to effect such reconciliation as they could with their French sovereign, and 
that at once. It was their affair, and they must decide it: he had neither the 
will to be a dictator, nor the force to defend a single city adequately ; but he was 
at the service of his country in life and death. 

Negotiations were accordingly opened. However hollow, they had the happy 
effect of avoiding an open breach. Aleneon, after some treacherous dealings 
with Parma, simplified matters by returning in June to France, where he died 
a year later of the same horrible and somewhat mysterious disease which carried 
off his brother Charles IX. As was usual when a prominent man ended his 
days without manifest signs of external violence, there was talk of poison ; but 
the later members of the house of Valois were far from health of body or mind. 
Orange, in the midst of these perplexities, consoled himself by taking for a 
fourth wife Coligny's widowed daughter. In this choice, as in his third, he had 
little regard to worldly and political considerations. His services belonged to 
his country, his home life was his own. Weighed down by public cares aud 
anxieties, he seemed to find domestic comfort and affection indispensable. 



6i8 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



In August he received some very plain language, the language of friendly- 
reproof and compassion, from the faithful deputies of Holland and Zealand. 
They had always abhorred and protested against the connection with Catholic 
France ; and now that the event had fully justified their objections, presuming 
on their long and intimate connection with the prince, they could not resist the 
opportunity of saying, 
"I told you so." In 
the true Puritan spirit, 
they intimated that it 
would be well to rely 
less on the favor of 
foreign princes and on 
the subtleties of human 
wisdom, and more on 
the help of heaven. 
To prove their sincerity, 
they offered to give 
much more than they 
had hitherto given for 
the general d e f e n s e 
against Spain. 

ORANGE 
REFUSES THE THRONE. 



If "Father Wil- 
liam*' was wounded by 
this filial censure, he 
perhaps found solace in 
the regard of the United 
Provinces, which in this 
same month offered and 
urged him to accept the 
sovereignty. He would 
not hear of it, unless on 
conditions that were 




FIRST WIFE; OF REMBRANDT, the great dutch painter. 



practically impossible — the consent of all the cities and outlying states. Apart 
from the fact that Aleneon had neither formally resigned nor been deposed^ 
Orange, as he pointed out, had no funds to carry on the war with; and he 
evidently doubted whether he could collect them under an ampler title. He 
still shrank from a dignity which most men in his position would have grasped 
at long before : he dreaded the responsibilities of an office which would not 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 619 

bring the power to discharge them, and preferred continuing to serve with a 
clear conscience in an humbler station. At the same time he refused the 
important dukedom of Brabant, alleging that "he would not give the King of 
Spain the right to say that his course had been prompted by selfish ambition, 
and the desire to deprive Philip of the provinces that he might take them for 
his own." 

During this year Parma attempted no great military movement, trusting 
rather to his intrigues than to his expensive army. But for the watchfulness of 
Orange, his operations and his gains might have been much more rapid. He 
had observed eagerly the quarrel of the States with Aleneon, and waited for the 
opportunity to spring. He secured most of the places which had been seized by 
French treason in the southwest, and in the north corrupted a brother-in-law of 
Orange, Van den Berg, who had succeeded Count John as Governor of Gelder- 
land: by this means he was enabled to take Zutphen on September 22d. Another 
of his tools was the Prince of Chimay, Aerschot's son, who by pretending to be 
a Protestant had won the government of Flanders. Like the rest of his family, 
he was a turncoat ; in fact, there were scarcely any nobles of high degree in this 
afflicted land who could be trusted to stand by the right, except the unequalled 
house of Nassau. 

INTRIGUES AT GHENT. 

The most important object at which Parma now aimed was Ghent, to which 
the traitorous Chimay had invited his attention. The local leaders of the plot 
were two men who had formerly been active against Spain. Champagny, soured 
by long imprisonment, though still confined, was allowed freely to receive his 
friends and correspond with them. Imbize, the redhot Republican and violent 
demagogue, who had earned a halter six years before, had now returned from 
Germany, pushed himself again to the front, and become as active as of old, 
thoueh on the other side. The turbulent and fickle city was blown about with 

o 

every wind of changing doctrine, and its magistrates had actually begun to treat 
with Philip's governor, when the earnest remonstrances of those of Brussels and 
Antwerp, of Orange and the States-General, brought them to their senses. 
Argument and entreaty, which had been liberally showered upon them, were 
enforced by the detection of Imbize in a plot to sieze Dendermonde, midway' 
between Ghent and Mechlin. Ryhove, whom we remember as the executioner 
of Hessels, happened to be in command there and to get notice of the attempt 
in time; it no doubt gave him pleasure to arrest his ancient rival and hand him 
over to the hangman, this time through due process of law. Ghent saw the 
execution and profited by it, and Parma's plans in Flanders received a check, 
except at Bruges, which Chimay made over in May, 1584. The traitor was 
deserted by his wife, who had been the wealthy widow of young Berlaymont: 
she became a Calvinist and took refuge in Holland. Conversions of this kind 




620 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 621 

among the nobles were at this time rare ; the tide had for years been setting 
the other way. 

Ypres, in the southwest part of Flanders, fell after a long siege, and afforded 
a curious example of Catholic zeal. The bones of the Reformed, that they might 
no longer pollute the earth, were dug up and hanged in their coffins. Living 
Protestants were obliged to leave the town at once. The fagot and the stake were 
happily out of date ; but no one knew when Spain might bring them in again. 

MURDER OF ORANGE. 

The price set by Philip on William's head had inspired various assassins 
with the complex purpose of serving at once the king, the Church, and their own 
pockets. Besides those already mentioned, two missionaries of the ban had been 
executed in 15S3-84 ; and a Frenchman had been released by his captors on prom- 
ising to do what he never intended. The last of these emissaries was Balthasar 
Gerard, a Burgundian, who had looked forward to the deed for years. He was 
a strange combination of cunning and fanaticism ; Parma, to whom he applied, 
thought him unfit for the attempt, but Parma was mistaken. He assumed the 
air of a zealous Protestant, met Orange several times, and made acquaintance 
with his house at Delft. Poverty stood in his way, for he had received nothing 
in advance : it was his victim's charity which enabled him to buy the implements 
of murder. Having laid his plans with care (for he meant to escape), he con- 
cealed himself on a stairway, and shot the prince through the body as he came 
from dinner, at two o'clock on Tuesday, July 10th, 1584. The last words of the 
liberator were, " My God, have mercy on this poor people ! " He died in a few 
minutes. The murderer fled, but was soon caught, and rmnished with ruthless 
cruelty — for there was none to intercede for him now. He seemed proud of his 
crime, showed amazing fortitude under torture, and smiled in the faces of his 
executioners to the end. His parents were ennobled and enriched by the king of 
Spain, at the expense of the Orange estates, then in his power. 

The untimely taking off of William the Silent is among the darkest mys- 
teries of Providence. He was but fifty-one; in almost perfect physical condition, 
notwithstanding all that he had gone through ; in the prime of his splend'd 
faculties ; and in the midst of a work as noble as any to which God ever called His 
servants. It was not for a small causa that Philip hated him and that the people 
loved him. His were the head to plan, the hand to guide, the heart to endnre and 
comfort. The revolution began with him, when he stood almost alone. It had 
gone on with him, step by step; he was its Maccabee, at once its Mattathias and 
its Judah. It did not end with him, because he had not lived in vain. His 
death established the Dutch Republic, but sounded the knell of liberty in the 
southern provinces. Had he been allowed to finish out his term of years, the 
fate of these might have been different; the seven free states would probably 
have been ten or twelve. 



622 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

THE FIRST MAN OF HIS TIME. 

One cannot but pause to meditate a moment on the extinction of such a 
light. His removal saddened and enfeebled the friends of liberty, but his 
memory has enriched humanity. In the small company of those who have been 
both good and great he occupies a foremost place. Never was the cause of truth 
and progress more worthily represented, or served with more unselfish and 
unswerving devotion. His character was almost too fine, too pure, too gentle, for 
the rough work he had to do; an infusion of coarser elements might have fitted 
him better to cope with his adversaries and rule a divided land. Yet in tact, in 
patience, in the gift of managing men and events, he was unrivalled ; he had no 
lieutenant and no successor. His should have been the task of reconciliation, 
of peaceful upbuilding; instead, he was forced to begin and carry on a lonesome 
war against hopeless odds. Charles V. admired and Alva respected his military 
talents ; but it is plain that he had no pleasure in their exercise, and was recon- 
ciled to organized murder only by harsh necessit}'. In an age of brute force and 
savage conflict he was before all a man of ideas and principles, wishing only to 
instruct, advance, and liberate mankind. When nearly all men of rank thought 
the world made for their avarice and lust to prey upon, he impoverished himself 
for bis country, steadily refused reward, and went on sacrificing all but honor to 
the end. Of birth and condition next to the very highest, called "cousin" by 
kings and emperors, his aristocracy taught him chiefly to preserve his essential 
dignity and to do nothing base. A republican philanthropist at bottom, the 
phrase oftenest and last on his lips showed what was nearest his heart — "the 
poor people." 

It has been often charged that he was ambitious. In the common meaning 
of the word, "ambition should be made of sterner stuff." In its higher sense, he 
was ambitious — ambitious to serve his Maker and his brethren. The only blot 
on his fair record is his stooping to practices then universal among diplomatists 
and rulers, and still counted permissible in times of war, as the use of spies and 
traitors; thus Philip's secretary was for ten years in his pay, and served him 
well. To these arts he was driven by desperate necessity, not by personal incli- 
nation. No man better loved direct and simple ways, when such were consistent 
with the public welfare. His language to those whom he could trust (and at 
times to some who could not be trusted), to the States, to friends and neighbors, 
was the measure of his thoughts. He conducted an enormous correspondence, 
and his state papers were numerous and weighty ; these documents afford a mir- 
ror of the times and of the man. The terms of compliment and courtesy he 
used when they were needed, but far oftener, in his home relations, the plainest 
and sincerest speech. Again and again he rebuked the jealousies and factions 
of the cities, their backwardness in the common cause, their niggardliness in 
providing for its defense. His was neither the scolding and exacting tone of 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



62 



Elizabeth nor the gay humor of Henry of Navarre, but his utterances were mighty 
with the force of truth. Here he had nothing to conceal, nothing to disguise, 
nothing to seek but to set forth the facts aud serve the right. The keenest 
statesman of his time gained his ascendancy by no arts of the politician or public 
flatterer. Whether he were repressing the follies and disorders of Ghent, or 
advising the Estates what to do about Aleneou, or declining the titles they 
offered, he talked frankly, fearlessly, and straight to the point. 

His private character was blameless and lovable ; but in a life so utterly 
consecrated to the public service aud spent in the public eye, his inmost traits 
became the property cf his 
country and of mankind, 
youth, while living like other 
nobles, he was grave, earnest, 
and reticent beyond his mates. 
He matured earl}*, aud was 
always equal to the re- 
sponsibilities that were 1 
thrust upon him. Solid, 
quiet, and steadfast, he 
seemed older than his 
years. When at thirty- 
three he defied the most 
powerful of earthly 
monarchs, he was mere- 
ly acting out the part 
he had chosen long 
before. From that date 
his views, his attitude, 
and his sym pat hies 
never changed. He had 
counted the cost of his 
venture, and found the 
source of inward 
strength. The most 
beautiful and benignant status of william the silent, at the hague. 
features of the Reformation were shown forth in him. H's cheerful fortitude 
surmounted all reverses, his calm and gentle faith was as strong as that of the 
most fiery fanatic. No secluded pietist trusted more utterly to the mercy of 
God in Christ; but he believed that Heaven works not by miracle, but by human 
agencies, and that head, heart, and hand should do their utmost to serve the Lord. 
No crusading hermit cared more for the Truth than he; but he had seen farther 




624 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 




AFTER THE SIEGE. 



into his Master's mind than others, and knew that the Kingdom is not to be set 
up by compulsion. To study his career is to see that its grand results were a 

stream flowing 
from a pure, 
deep spring. 
With the fee- 
blest outward 
resources he 
accomplished 
much, because 
his Helper 
was on high. 
Few have been 
so revered and 
loved in life 
and death, and 
fewer still, it 

may be, have deserved such love and reverence. To the careless eye there are 
many more impressive figures, more sensational and tinselled heroes ; but if we 
judge by character and deed, no name stands higher on the noble roll of libera- 
tors and martyrs. 

THE LATER DUTCH WARS. 

The crime of Belthasar Gerard removed the chief obstacle in Parma's way. 
The years next following present a lamentable chronicle of disasters. Ghent 
fell within three months, then Brussels and other cities, and in 1585 Antwerp, 
after a siege that was one of the most amazing on record, and the chief triumph 
of Parma's genius. This settled the fate of the Belgic provinces ; they returned 
reluctantly and perforce, to that " allegiance " which meant ruin. 

But the war was not over. Young Maurice, emerging from careful studies, 
proved himself not only a master at arms but the inventor of a new science of 
warfare, so that the world came to the Netherlands to take lessons. In siege 
after siege the Spanish garrisons of the north were overcome, and many towns 
retaken. Parma died, and others took his place. The Dutch Republic became 
a great naval power, won victories at sea, and established distant colonies. In 
1598 Philip II. died, more full of years than of honors; in 1867 an Englishman, 
visiting the famous monasteries of the Escurial, which this monarch built and 
where his mortal part was buried, " saw a crowd of monks still praying " for his 
misguided soul. 

The war went on. Poor Philip III. felt bound to keep it up, though an 
expensive and in the main a losing game. In 1609 a truce was made, to last for 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



625 



twelve years ; both parties wanted a breathing-space. The English Pilgrims 
were now received at Eeyden, to remain till they crossed the sea at Plymouth in 
1620. The Synod of Dort was held, and a spirit of intolerance developed which 
would not have pleased the Father of his Country. In 162 1 war began again, 
j nst because fanatical and fossilized Spain could not bring herself to recognize 
the logic of events. It lasted till 1648, when the Spaniards were driven to 
acknowledge the republic which had been established more than sixty years 
before. By that time the King of England was a prisoner and the Puritans were 
in power. 

Little Holland, faithful from the first, and cherishing alike the memory and 
the principles of her great leader, had won her long battle and become a nation. 
His sons or descendants were long stadtholders, and in our century kings ; his 
great-grandson, at the revolution of 1688, became William III. of England. 




ANCIENT SWORDS. 



CHAPTER XLI. 



THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA. 



NGLAND and Spain, during the last third of the 
sixteenth century, were natural enemies. While 
nominally at peace, each hated and feared the other, 
and was glad to inflict injury in irregular ways. 
Philip was more than once suspected of plotting 
against Elizabeth's throne and life ; and while the 
queen was always chary of spending money or her 
subjects' blood abroad, those subjects were more ac- 
tive than she in helping their neighbors across the 
North sea. "Her cold indifference to the heroic 
struggle in Flanders," as Mr. Green says, "was more 
than compensated by the enthusiasm it roused among 
the nation at large. The earlier Flemish refugees 
found a home in the Cinque Ports. The exiled 
merchants of Antwerp were welcomed by the mer- 
chants of London. While Elizabeth dribbled out 
her secret aid to the Prince of Orange, the London 
traders sent him half a million from their own purses, a sum equal to a 
year's revenue of the crown. Volunteers stole across the Channel in increas- 
ing numbers to the aid of the Dutch, till the five hundred Englishmen who 
fought at the beginning of the conflict rose to a brigade of five thousand, whose 
braver}' turned one of the most critical battles of the war. Dutch privateers 
found shelter in English ports, and English vessels hoisted the .flag of the States 
for a dash at the Spanish traders. Protestant fervor rose steadily among English- 
men as the best captains and soldiers returned from the campaigns in the Low 
Countries to tell of Alva's atrocities, or as privateers brought back tales of English 
seamen who had been seized in Spain and the New World, to linger amidst the 
tortures of the Inquisition, or to die in its fires. In the presence of this steady 
drift of popular passion, the diplomacy of Elizabeth became of little moment. 
If the queen was resolute for peace, England was resolute for war." 




THE SPANISH MAIN. 



Spain owed her wealth and greatness to the voyage of Columbus in 1492. 
Cabot, with an English vessel and crew, visited the mainland of America before 

(626) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 627 

the great discoverer did, and in 1498 sailed along its shores for eighteen hundred 
miles ; but nothing was done to follow up this advantage, and the Atlantic coast, 
north of Florida, remained untouched for another century. Meantime Spain, 
through the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, monopolized the New World, and 
made many settlements on the Pacific. Early in Elizabeth's reign the " sea-dogs " 
of England became as active as the "sea-beggars" of Zealand, and in the same 
way: acts of piracy at Spanish expense seemed to them acts of piety. At first 
their ravages were in familiar waters ; but in 1570 Francis Drake found abun- 
dant spoils in the West Indies. Seven years later he rounded Patagonia with 
only eighty men, attacked the new towns of South America, and after sailing 
round the world came home in 1580 with a vast treasure. His exploits were 
imitated on a smaller scale by others, and the Spanish Main became the scene of 
much desultory warfare, to which religious hatred lent added horrors. An awful 
fate awaited these bold adventurers when captured or shipwrecked among their 
foes ; they became not only prisoners of war, but victims of the Inquisition. 
When they lost their vessels, they would retire into the interior and make friends, 
with the natives, from whom they learned the uses of tobacco. This fact, with 
much interesting matter about the wild nautical doings of those da}^, is set forth 
in Charles Kingsley's novel, "Westward Ho, or Voyages and Adventures of Sir 
Amyas Leigh." 

Philip was enraged by these attacks upon his western colonies, and especially 
by the successes and insolence of Drake. He asked that the pirate be given up 
to him; Elizabeth replied by knighting Drake, and wearing some of the stolen 
diamonds he had given her. The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, told her that 
if she acted in that way, "matters would come to the cannon;" she answered 
that if he talked so he would go to prison. This unusual boldness in the pru- 
dent queen came from a conviction that Philip could not afford to break with her. 
She was mistaken : the conquest of Portugal, with its vast foreign dependencies, 
soon increased his wealth enormously, and made him more jealous than ever 
of the rising naval power of England. 

As has been already hinted, Elizabeth's long dallying with Aleneon, and 
urging him on the reluctant Netherlands as their sovereign, are explained by 
her anxiety to keep on good terms with the house of Valois, that France might 
serve as a buffer between her islands and Spain. The duke's perfidious folly and 
his departure from the provinces put an end to these fine plans, and left England 
and the weakened republic to help each other as they might, or stand alone 
against the tyrant and the^age of Rome. The}' were not without friends indeed 
in France, but Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots had all the}' could do to 
hold their wn. 

After the murder of Orange, the English ambassador at Paris wrote home 
that what had been done at Delft there were "practisers more than two or three 



628 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 




WILLIAM THE SILENT AND HIS 

about to execute upon her ma- 
jesty, and that within two 
months." Elizabeth knew that 
her life was always in danger; 
the Jesuits and Mary Stuart had 
their plotters and would-be 
assassins continually busy. 
Henry III. was now a shadow, 
and Philip, through the Guises 
and their Catholic League, was 
practically master of France. 
In this emergency, surrounded 
by a network of intrigue, with 
perils on every hand, to act seemed safer than to sit still. When Antwerp fell in 
August, 1585, the queen hesitated no longer : she sent Leicester to Holland with 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 629 

an army, and Drake to the West Indies with a fleet. The latter accomplished 
much, the former little. At the battle of Zutphen, September 2 2d, 1586, Sir 
Philip Sidney, the fairest flower of modern chivalry, left the world a beautiful 
example in his death. With quixotic magnanimity he had taken off part of his 
armor, to put himself in the same peril with the marshal. As he lay mortally 
wounded, a cup of water was brought him with difficulty : seeing a dying soldier 
gaze wistfully upon it, he handed it untouched to the poor private, with the 
famous ' words, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." The incident has done 
quite as much to preserve his fame as his sonnets, his u Arcadia," and his "Defense, 
of Poesie." 

PHILIP PREPARES TO INVADE ENGLAND. 

The execution of Mary Stuart, on February 8th, 1587, enraged the Catholic 
world, and gave Philip a sort of claim on the British throne, to which the Queen 
of Scots had been the next heir. The pope offered financial as well as spiritual 
aid for the conquest of England. To protect his American possessions and secure 
his provinces still in revolt, the king saw that he must attack. The English 
Jesuits had long been assuring him that Scotland, Ireland, and half England 
itself would rise in arms at the appearance of his fleet ; they gave him a list of 
Catholic nobles and gentry who, they said, would join his standards. As the 
issue proved, it was a mistake to suppose that these men set their creed above 
their loyalty : the island contained many Romanists, but comparatively few trai- 
tors. Yet preparations went on diligently, within as well as without. A little 
army of three hundred priests, taking their lives in their hands, came over from 
the continent and went to work in secret, proving to their hearers, one by one, 
that it was their duty to obey the pope, oppose the queen, and put down heresy. 

The fleet was a long time getting ready, and delays were numerous. It was 
almost in shape to start in April, 1587, when the indomitable Drake, bound to 
"singe the Spanish king's beard," suddenly appeared in the harbor of Cadiz, 
burned near a hundred store-ships with a vast quantity of provisions, and then 
made a dash at Corunna and did more damage. All the supplies had now to be 
renewed, and this took a year. The Marquis of Santa Croce, an officer of expe- 
rience and repute, had been appointed admiral, but he died, as did also his lieu- 
tenant, Paliano, and the command was given to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, 
who was a very great nobleman but no sailor at all. It was May 29th, 1588, 
when the armada sailed for Lisbon ; a hundred and twenty-nine vessels, many 
of them the largest known, with over twenty-four hundred guns, near eight 
thousand five hundred sailors, and more than nineteen thousand soldiers. A 
storm speedily drove them back with loss, and they did not start again till July 
1 2th, old style, or, as we reckon time, July 2 2d. 

The plan had been to make for the coast of Flanders, and effect a junction 
with Parma, who had a quantity of transports at Dunkirk and some seventeen 



630 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

thousand men. The united forces were then to land at the mouth of the Thames 
and elsewhere, under protection of the fleet, call out their alleged native allies, 
march upon London, and do other fine things which hardly need be specified. 
But difficulties, and very serious ones, arose to block the first steps of this pro- 
gramme. Parma, who was to conduct the land operations, had been ready for a 
year or two — long enough to become much better acquainted with the situation 
than his master was. He had little confidence in any rising of English allies,, 
and he raised so many objections as to show that his approval of the scheme was 
not hearty. After landing, he wrote to Madrid, he would meet opposition, and 
have to fight so often and against such unknown forces that the issue must be 
extremely doubtful. Moreover, the Netherland patriots, who were just as much 
interested in these proceedings as their friends over the water, took such active 
steps to blockade his fleet that it would not have been easy for him to put to sea 
if he had been much more anxious to do so than he was. The whole affair was 
destined to be settled on the water. 

THE FIGHT IN THE CHANNEL. 

Meantime the alarm was great in England, and the preparations great also. 
The country was thoroughly roused, but not in the way Philip had been led to 
expect. Catholics and Protestants laid aside their differences and joined hands 
in defense of their common country. Some apprehensions were felt as to the 
loyalty of the admiral, Lord Howard, who was of the old religion, but they were 
needless. The heads of the old noble houses, whose names stood high in the Jesuit 
list of expected helpers, were as prompt as any to resist invasion. The queen 
asked, the city of London for five thousand men and fifteen ships ; twice these 
numbers were offered. Landsmen came forward from every quarter as volunteers- 
Elizabeth had a body-guard of forty-five thousand, while Leicester, with sixteen 
thousand, went to the coast to oppose Parma's expected landing. The marine 
arrangements were still more zealously made. The royal navy had but thirty ves- 
sels, but these were joined by five times as many more, so that in all full eighteen 
thousand Englishmen were in the Channel. " Coasters put out from every little 
harbor ; squires and merchants pushed off in their own little barks for a brush 
with the Spaniards." Lord Seymour took his position off Dunkirk, to help 
the Dutchmen watch their foes on land there ; Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins, and 
other noted rovers of long experience remained with Howard, ready to observe 
and welcome the armada on its approach from the open sea. The English ships 
were imperfectly provisioned, were much smaller than the Spanish, and carried 
less than half the guns; but they were far swifter, more manageable, and better 
served. 

On July 30th the armada entered the Channel in the form of a crescent,, 
seven miles in length. In the evening it passed Plymouth, and beacon-lights 




631 



632 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

flashed the news along the coast. The English ships came out of Plymouth 
harbor and followed, their numbers constantly increasing. The action began 
next day and lasted for more than a week. The Spaniards tried to close, but 
were not able ; the light vessels of Howard and Drake, drawing but one foot of 
water to their two, sailed around them, pouring in a rapid and deadly fire, and 
"plucking their feathers one by one," while the big guns from their lofty decks 
worked slowly, and in most cases fired too high. Several galleons were sunk or 
disabled, while the English suffered very little damage. 

After seven days of this skirmishing, the armada, completely foiled thus 
far, dropped anchor in Calais roads, at no great distance from Dunkirk. Medina 
now sent to Parma, asking for some ammunition and smaller ships, and inviting 
him to cross the sea and make his descent upon England, according to Phil p's 
plan. But that wary commander, whose rule was never to fight unless he was 
tolerably sure of winning, replied that he had no light vessels, that the weather 
was against his sending powder and ball, and that he could not cross while the 
sea was full of English craft. All this was true enough, and the wind had from 
the start favored the defenders of their country and been against the invaders ; 
but it was also true that Farnese liked to have his own way and was little 
inclined to risk defeat, first on the water and then on an island that was fully 
armed and utterly hostile. The whole scheme depended on his co-operation, and 
was safe to fail without it. 

OFF THE FLEMISH COAST. 

Admiral Howard and his officers, however, had no inside view of Parma's 
mind, and were by no means confident of the result. So far as they could see, 
Medina had attained his first object, in effecting a junction, or near it, with his 
allies in the Netherlands ; and they feared that the Spaniards might be able to 
drive away the Hollanders who were blockading Dunkirk, and thus to release 
Parma's fleet. The English had all their force together, Lord Seymour having 
joined the rest ; they had the ablest and bravest seamen in the world ; but their 
provisions, and what was worse, their powder, were giving out. Something must 
be done to force the enemy out of his harbor into the open sea, where he could be 
attacked before it was too late. 

This was done on the night of August 7th by means of eight fire-ships, 
which were sent into the roads of Calais with the tide. The Spaniards, in much 
alarm, cut their cables, stood out to sea, and moved eastward. One of their 
largest ships ran aground, and Howard attacked it in person. The rest of the 
English, led by Drake, pursued, and in a fight which lasted all day inflicted great 
damage, killing some four thousand men, sinking three enormous galleons, and 
driving three others ashore. The failure of their ammunition prevented Drake 
and his comrades from finishing the business then and there ; nor did they know 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 633 

how complete was their victory. The armada still appeared to them "wonderful 
great and strong." 

But the Spaniards had had all they wanted ia the way of fio-hting. " Hud- 
dled together by the wind and the deadly English fire, their sails torn, their masts 
shot away, the crowded galleons had become mere siaughter-houses. Bravely as 
the seamen fought, they were cowed by the terrible butchery. Medina himself 
was in despair." He said to one of his captains, "We are lost : what shall we 
do? " The officer 
was for continuing 
the 



fight, 



but 




he 
was overruled. A 
council of war was 
held on August 
9th. Ignorant, of 
course, of the mo- 
mentous fact that 
their foes had no 
more powder to 
fight with, they 
dared not face the 
terrors of the Ch an- 
nel again : so the 
fatal order was 
taken to sail north- 
ward around the 
British islands, 
and so home. 

THZ STORM. 

The English 
followed for several 
days, to a point 
beyond the mouth 
of the Humber, till 
they were not far 
from starvation. 

Further pursuit was needless, for the weather had taken the work out of the 
hands of Drake and Howard. It was as if the God of winds and waves had 
arisen in wrath to protect His favorite island and avenge the insult offered 
to liberty. A succession of violent storms arose, and kept battering the 
doomed vessels for a month or more. " Some were sunk, some dashed to 



LAND'S END. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 635 

pieces against the Irish cliffs. The wreckers of the Orkneys and the Faroes, 
the clansmen of the Scottish isles, the kernes of Donegal and Galway, all 
had their part in the work of murder and robbery. Eight thousand Spaniards 
perished between the Giant's Causeway and the Blaskets, on the Irish coast. 
On a strand near Sligo an English captain numbered eleven hundred corpses 
which had been cast up by the sea. The flower of the Spanish nobility, who 
had been sent on the new crusade under Alonzo de Leyva, after twice suffer- 
ing shipwreck, put a third time to sea to founder on a reef near Dunluce." 
Of near a hundred and thirty vessels which had set out in July to do 
such great things, only fifty-four returned to Spain in October, and these so 
injured as to be nearly useless. Of their crews and the soldiers they nad carried, 
about one-third, less than ten thousand men, many of them half-dead from 
wounds and pestilence, survived to spread the tale of the desperate valor and 
the ferocious coasts by which their comrades had fallen. 

This was the end of the Invincible Armada, as it had been boastfully called. 
Philip complained that he had "sent his ships against men, not against the 
seas" — as if winds and waves were elements that could be left out of naval cal- 
culations. Confident in the Avealth and power that were soon to be only a 
memory, he said that he could easily set afloat another armada if he wished ; but 
some years passed before he repeated the rash experiment, and then on a smaller 
scale and with no more success. Spain was no longer mistress of the seas. Her 
maritime supremacy had been broken by the feebler power she had attempted to 
destroy, and with it her glory departed, while the greatness of England began. 
That summer month was the most glorious in her entire history, alike by 
the providential deliverance from a fearful danger which had long impended, and 
by the thorough union of English hearts and hands to defend their country. 
Dissensions had vanished in the hour of utmost peril : one common impulse had 
moved all true subj ects of Elizabeth. She could say, as she welcomed her defenders 
home, "Let tyrants fear! My chiefest strength and safeguard is in your loyal 
hearts." From that day England had little to fear from Spain. Her privateers 
preyed more than ever on Spanish commerce, and in 1589 her fleet and army 
carried the war to the peninsula, besieging Corunna and attacking Lisbon. 

The defeat of the armada was a heavy blow to the cause of papal aggression 
everywhere. It helped the Dutch patriots ; it encouraged Henry III. to throw off 
the crushing yoke of the Catholic League, and smoothed the way of Henry of 
Navarre to the throne of France. But most of all to us who are of English 
blood, it sealed the triumph of English Protestantism. All felt that the war was 
for faith and conscience. The spirit of the nation spoke in the last words of Sir 
Richard Grenville, after fighting fifty Spanish ships larger than his own: "I die 
with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a good soldier 
ought to do, for his country and his queen, for honor and religion." 



CHAPTER XLII. 



THE PURITANS. 



ten said iu a former chapter, Elizabeth hated the Puritans, 
though they were the strongest supporters of her throne. 
It was circumstance, not choice, that made her a 
leader in the path of national progress. Could she 
v have had her way, the old religion might have suited 

her well enough, or better, a mongrel system like 
her father's, in which doctrine and worship were 
unchanged, but the monarch became head of the 
national Church in place of the pope. She loved 
pomp and disliked republican simplicity: her temper 
was absolute, and she saw that Calvinism always 
developed a spirit of liberty. The character of a 
Puritan, as drawn at that time, did not suit her at 
all : "In matters of faith, his reason was always sub- 
mitted to the Word of God ; but in all other things 
the greatest names in the world would not lead him 
without reason." She wished her people to be led 
simply by her will. 
But stern necessity identified her interests with those of Protestantism, for 
Rome was her mortal foe ; and Protestant then meant chiefly Puritan. A middle 
■course, like that of the Lutherans in Germany, would have been more to her 
mind ; but the English Reformation took its direction chiefly from Geneva. As 
time went on, this character became more and more pronounced. The allies 
whom she was forced to aid, and for whom many of her subjects fought, both in 
France and in the Netherlands, were Calvinists: refugees from both countries 
•came to England in great numbers, bringing their stern convictions of doctrine, 
of duty, and of individual rights. The struggle with Spain, the defeat of the 
armada, deepened and intensified this feeling. It was never universal, but it 
ruled the most earnest spirits in the land. They were not content with an official 
religion, which might be settled for them by the authorities : they believed in 
the direct relation between the individual soul and its Maker. 




UNDER ELIZABETH. 

It must be remembered that there was in those days but one national 
Church ; the quarrel was within this, and not between discordant sects. The 

(636) 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



637 



idea of Dissent was not yet born ; the Romanists were the only nonconformists. 
Every one else belonged to the Church as of course, and (so far as he knew and 




LADY JANE GREY. 

cared about these matters) wished it to take the shape of his opinions. The 



638 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

prevailing tendency was more and more against forms and decorations. The use 
of the Prayer-Book was enforced, and the surplice was generally worn by the 
clergy during the service, though many of them, then as long after, put on the 
Geneva gown when they mounted to the pulpit ; but the ceremonial was rendered as 
simply as possible. There was much less music than is now employed. Stained 
glass windows had begun to be taken out in the reign of Edward VI. ; in that of 
Elizabeth, the communion-table ceased to be called an altar, and was removed 
from the chancel to the middle of the church. Successive archbishops varied in 
their sympathies and usages ; one of them abandoned the venerable practice of 
bowing at the name of Jesus in the creed. Matters like these, which the more 
rational spirit of our time refers wholly to custom, taste, and expediency, then 
received an undue importance, and were soon to be fought over with a fierce zeal 
which was sadly out of place in things belonging to the sanctuary but noway 
essential to salvation. 

The queen cared little for these details in themselves, and was safe to direct 
the services in her royal chapels as she liked ; but she strove to check the rising 
tide of independent opinion. Her efforts were ineffectual, because as. a rule they 
could reach only the clergy and those who rushed into print or took part in 
public life. The Star Chamber, afterwards so notorious, nourished in this reign, 
having come down from that of Henry VII. ; and many things were done which 
seem to us the work of shocking tyranny. The victims of these petty persecu- 
tions bore their sentences patiently, knowing that the Papists received much 
harder treatment, and that the queen, after all, was in a large way the main bul- 
wark of Protestant liberties. One striking and pathetic instance of this feeling 
was given as early as 1582. A lawyer named Stubbs put forth a pamphlet 
called "Discovery of a Gaping Gulf;" it objected, as nearly all men did, to the 
proposed marriage with Aleneon. Elizabeth had no intention of raising that 
worthless scion of French royalty to her throne ; but, in the true spirit of des- 
potism, she counted it treason that any of her subjects should presume to 
question her conduct. The unlucky author, after the barbarous fashion of that 
time, was sentenced to lose his hand : as soon as it was .cut off, he waved his hat 
on the scaffold with the one he had left, and shouted, "God save Queen Eliza- 
beth !" That was hardly an exaggerated sample of the temper of the Puritans 
toward a sovereign who deserved less well of them than they did of her. As 
a rule, they were loyal ; they did not wish to disturb the settled condition of 
government and society ; but they would not be constrained in matters of con- 
science and opinion. In a later reign, under long and sore oppression, they came 
to hate both the monarchy and the Church. , 

As the need of defense against foreign enemies faded out of sight and the 
people turned their attention to domestic concerns, their love of liberty grew 
stronger. The movement spread among the middle classes : the merchants, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



639 



most of the country squires, even many of the knights, were Puritans. The 
House of Commons in 1601 criticized and opposed certain measures of the queen, 
who prudently submitted. In the first Parliament of James I. it refused to do 
business on Sunday, as had been the custom. In the next, it showed its temper 
yet more plainly by going elsewhere than to Westminster Abbey to receive the 
communxon, "for fear of copes and wafer-cakes." 



JAMES I. AND THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. 

James I., who succeeded Elizabeth in 1603, was the son of Mary Stuart, and 
already king of Scotland. Beyond his birth and titles, there was little royalty 
about him. He never understood the ,,. N , r/ _ 



character of the nation which he 
ruled. A pedant, a truckler to France, 
a patron of base favorites, his whole 
policy was reactionary. At his ac- 
cession England declined from the 
high place she had reached among 
the powers of Europe. But, as Ma- 
caulay says, "if his administration 
had been able and splendid, it would 
probably have been fatal to the 
country. We owe more to his weak- 
nesses and meannesses than to the 
wisdom and courage of much better 
sovereigns." For he was a tyrant at 
heart, and cherished notions which 
would have been the death of liberty, 
if he had been the man to enforce 
them. In his time the surprising 
theory of Sir Robert Filmer was de- 
veloped and propagated, that God 
gave to the patriarchs, and through 
them to all kings in lineal succession, 
an absolute authority, a divine right, which transcended all other rights, 
cording to this, the monarch, though a fool and a knave in unbelieving eyes, was 
a sacred person who could do no wrong, and whom nobody could call to account : 
his eldest son, and that son's descendants for any length of time, though excluded 
from the throne, retained their superior character and authority, and the popular 
will and the general interest went for nothing. 

When a sovereign holds ideas like this, it is fortunate if he has no standing 
army, and if his personal traits are such as to inspire neither affection, admiration, 




ELIZABETHS TOMB, WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 



640 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

nor esteem. James, though, an incapable coward, was silly enough to keep his 
Parliament irritated by reminding them that they were merely his creatures, 
and had no more right to question his will or power than those of the Most High. 
These ludicrous pretensions, combined with his utter lack of commanding or 
even respectable qualities, rapidly undermined the loyal regard in which the 
nation had hitherto held the throne. The Tudors, who were forceful and mas- 
terful rulers, had never claimed so much. James, who was far more laughed at 
than loved or feared, seemed but a poor representative of the Deity. 

Still the doctrine of Divine Right throve and spread. To the rational mind 
it is more obnoxious even than that of papal infallibility, for kings may possess 
absolute power in temporal things, which popes never had, except on a small 
scale. The common sense of England was to make short work of it in another 
generation, but it was to give much trouble first. It was accepted in good faith 
by the higher orders, the clergy, and some of the common people. It became a 
shibboleth, a superstition, to which many of the best and bravest were to sacri- 
fice their fortunes and their lives. Our ancestors did not know as much as we 
do about the principles which underlie government ; what we know has been 
learned mainly through their mistakes. 

The fault of a state church is that it will naturally, and almost inevitably, 
be on the side of privilege and the court. When it is Protestant, owning no alle- 
giance to a foreign power, its officers will be servants of the crown, which appoints 
them, rather than of the people. The reformed Church of England in this reign 
began to alter its complexion, passing from the doctrines of Calvin to those of 
Arminius, and from its accustomed simplicity to a more elaborate ritual and 
loftier pretensions. Laud, afterwards archbishop, was an active agent in bring- 
ing about these changes : he held the highest views, and urged the king to 
impose the Prayer-Book on Presbyterian Scotland. The pulpits, or some of them, 
now claimed that Episcopacy was necessary, not only to the well-being but to the 
existence of a Church, and began to ring the changes on that most lamentable of 
tenets, the divine right of kings and the duty of passive obedience in subjects. 

All this was gall and wormwood to the thorough Puritans, who were being 
gradually forced into the position of sectaries. They had accepted episcopacy, 
the Prayer-Book, and the surplice, not from choice, but as non-essential matters 
which it was not worth while to object to : they now began to hate them as asso- 
ciated with what seemed a retrograde movement toward Rome, and as the signs 
and instruments of tyranny. The Pilgrims went to Holland, and thence across 
the sea, to make the first settlement in Massachusetts. Others remained to sulk, 
to scowl, to endure uncongenial customs with such patience as they might, and 
to make the world resound with their deeds somewhat later. Not all of them 
were like the figure painted by the popular imagination, and by such literary 
artists as Scott and Macaulay, "known from other men by his gait, his garb, his 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



641 




lank hair, the sour solemnity of his 
face, the upturned white of his eyes, 
the nasal twang with which he spoke, 
and above all by his peculiar dialect." 
Fanatics enough there were, and wildly 
illiberal opinions, that put a curse on 
all amusements, most studies, and many 
occupations, making of life a narrow 
and gloomy cave. " Some precisians 
had scruples about teaching the Latin 
grammar, because the names of Mars, 
Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. 
The fine arts were all but proscribed. 
The solemn peal of the organ was su- 
perstitious. The light music of Ben 
Johnson's masques was dissolute. Half 
the fine pair tings in England were 
idolatrous, and the other half indecent." 
So the advanced Puritans thought, and 
the} 7 were not men to keep their con- 
victions to themselves. And against 
them stood the Church part}-, the loyal- 
ists, and " the world's people," the every- 
day hearty Englishmen who liked their 
cakes and ale. Excesses on either side 
increased the alienation, and one ex- 
treme opinion or usage bred its oppo- 
site. 

CHARLES I. 

The foolish king died in 1625, leav- 
ing to his son an evil heritage. Charles 



HIGH STREET, OXFORD. 



642 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

I. was much more of a man than his father, in appearance, manners, abilities, 
and character. In private life he would have been estimable and blameless ; but 
as a ruler he had one fatal and unpardonable fault. He was so steeped in the 
pernicious doctrine of divine right that it blinded his intellect and paralyzed his 
conscience. He evidently thought that between himself and his subjects there 
could be no equality, and therefore no contract, no mutual obligation ; they had 
nothing but duties, he nothing but rights. This amazing delusion explains the 
moral delinquencies which, in such a man, seem far stranger than their punish, 
ment. If, through the wickedness of men and the mysteries of Providence, he 
was reduced to the wretched necessity of bargaining and treating with his upstart 
subjects, his promises were to his mind no more binding than those made under 
fear of death to a madman or a murderer. His word was of less value than his pre- 
rogative : the one might be broken, the other not — with his consent. Rome had 
held that no faith was to be kept with heretics. Charles was a devout church- 
man, but he disliked a Papist much less than a Puritan, and felt that rebellion 
was the worst kind of heresy. 

With a cool fanaticism almost equal to that of the Spanish Philip, Charles 
entered on his ill-omened task of remaking England to his mind. A war was on 
foot : he needed supplies, and it was the business of Parliament to grant them. 
But Parliament was not disposed to be his humble tool. It was led by able 
statesmen, learned lawyers, and courageous patriots, " men who knew their 
rights, and knowing, dared maintain." Twice, within the first year of this reign, 
the Houses met and were angrily dismissed. After the second dissolution, some 
of their boldest leaders were imprisoned : after each the king levied taxes for 
himself, without a shadow of legal authority. In a third Parliament he began 
his course of falsehood and perfidy, by sanctioning the Petition of Right, called 
the second Magna Charta, which he never meant to observe. In March, 1629, the 
anger of the Commons broke forth : the speaker was held down in his chair 
while the doors were locked against the usher who came with his usual message 
of dissolution, and Sir John Eliot uttered the prophetic menace, "None have 
gone about to break Parliaments but in the end Parliaments have broken them." 
Eliot was thrown with others into the Tower, where he died, "the first martyr of 
English liberty." 

Charles now began to govern in his own arbitrary way, as none of his pred- 
ecessors had ever tried to do, without a Parliament, and in contemptuous defi- 
ance of public opinion. Or rather, as Mr. Green claims, he thought that his 
position was secure, that he was simply acting on his rights, and that his people 
would come to their senses in time. His was tyranny on a moral basis, which 
needed no army to support it. Such an ill-instructed conscience does more harm 
than none at all. With all his sincere piety, he had read in vain the texts which 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



643 



tell that "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,' 
in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" 



aud "If the light that is 



LAUD AND WENTWORTH. 

His concern was not for defenses, but for supplies. As he had said to the leg- 
islators, "If you do not your duty, mine would then order me to use those other 
means which God has put into my hand." The divine name was invoked to 
cover opportunity used in total disregard of law. The laws, he would have said 
are for the people, not for 
the king, whose will is 
above the law. If he 
wanted aid, it was sup- 
plied by two favorite ad- 
visers, whose unwavering 
steadiness guided his 
somewhat vacillating tem- 
per, and urged him stead- 
ily on in the path of ruin. 
Laud, who had risen at 
first by his own merit and 
then by royal favor, be- 
came Bishop of London 
and prime minister in 
1628, and primate of Eng- 
land in 1633. He was a 
man entirely sincere, of 
narrow, formal mind, of 
great energy, aud of con- 
victions so absolute that 
they left no room for petty 
scruples. Like his master, 
he went to work with a 
clear conscience in what 
was mainly the devil's 
service, supposing it to be 
God's 

THE MARTYRS' MEMORIAL. OXFORD. 

It was less easy to estimate the character of Sir Thomas Wentworth, after- 
wards Earl of Strafford. He had been one of the patriot leaders in Parliament, and 
his powerful and brilliant mind was perfectly familiar with both sides of the contro- 
versy, whereas the king. Laud, and many others, saw only one. He is a pictur- 
esque and striking figure, but history has no love for renegades, and it is not 




644 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

unjust to call him a splendid cynic and egoist, who was willing to lend his great 
talents to the party that would give them most scope. When Buckingham, the 
king's worthless friend and adviser, died in 1629, Wentworth made his peace with 
Charles, and soon became in effect the head of the civil and military administra- 
tion, as Laud was of the ecclesiastical. Both were as ruthless as tyrants need to 
be — for religion had not yet succeeded in teaching, except to a few elect spirits, 
its most obvious and primary lesson of humanity. They aimed, of course, to 
make their master an absolute monarch. But with all their ability and zeal, 
they had not the foresight to estimate the signs of the times, and distinguish 
between what was possible and what was not. They were bad architects, doomed 
to perish in the fall of their own edifice. 

The chief instruments of tyranny were the infamous Star Chamber, which 
had charge of political cases, the High Commission, which dealt with those of 
religion, and a council at York, presided over by Wentworth. Lord Clarendon, 
the royalist historian, admits that nearly every man of note in the country had 
been injured by the first, that the second had few to speak well of it, and that 
the third had reduced Magna Charta to nullity in the north. All these pro- 
ceeded in disregard of law. The ordinary courts were powerless to give redress, 
and the judges were mostly mere pliant tools of the king. Such a system 
worked to a charm in Spain ; it answered tolerably in France ; but the English 
were not a people to endure it very long. Many of all conditions had resisted 
the illegal taxes, and gained their reward in imprisonment or something worse. 
John Hampden, early in this reign, won his first fame by refusing his contri- 
bution to the forced loan called ship-money. "I could be content to lend," said 
he, "but fear to draw on myself that curse in Magna Charta, which should be 
read twice a year against those who infringe it." The court decided against 
him, and he exchanged his charming country home for the narrow and squalid 
quarters of a jail. 

PROTESTANT PERSECUTIONS. 

But what galled the people even more than illegal taxes was religious per- 
secution. Laud had conceived a scheme for improving the services, and return- 
ing, as he claimed, to the usages and beliefs of a former period. Judged by 
liberal standards of taste and devotion, the scheme had merits ; it was revived 
after two hundred years, and is now largely followed in the Episcopal churches 
of England and America. This has been of free choice, because ministers and 
congregations thought this mode of worship appropriate and useful ; but Laud's 
monstrous idea was to enforce it on everybody, whether they liked it or not. He 
did not stop to think that even truth turns to a lie when one is compelled to 
swallow it under penalties ; that things harmless in themselves, perhaps attractive 
and beautiful, become odious when thrust upon eyes averted and crammed down 
reluctant throats. It was a sad and shameful spectacle, that of a Protestant 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 645 

Church imitating the methods of paganism and popery, and coercing people to 
worship God in temples and attitudes not of their own choosing, and under forms 
which they abhorred. The scandal was the greater, because the matters in 
dispute had till lately been so leniently administered, and insisted on, if at all, 
only on the grouud of national uniformity, not of intrinsic importance. But 
now a deliberate effort was made to dragoon the whole nation into accepting a 
point of view recently discovered or invented, kneeling at the same moment, 
bowing together toward the east, and pretending to regard these trivial details as 
if they were essential. 

It is true that the punishments for Dissent were not so severe as those which 
Rome had made frightfully familiar; but some of them were brutal enough. No 
fagots were lighted, no lives taken in the name of religion ; but fines and impris- 
onment were common, while cropped ears, slit noses, and branded foreheads 
marked those who had dared to protest against the new methods of persuasion. 
Archbishop Leighton's father, for issuing a diatribe called "Zion's plea against 
the Prelacy," was mutilated and kept in jail ten years. William Prynne, a law- 
yer of learning and some ability, and afterwards a member of Parliament, was 
placed in the pillory and lost his ears in May, 1634, besides being fined, impris- 
oned, and degraded, for a publication of the previous year, called " Histrio-Mas- 
tix." Nothing daunted, he again braved the censor with ''News from Ipswich," 
and in June, 1637, had the remnants of his ears taken off, and was put in confine- 
ment and kept there till released by the Long Parliament in 1640. These were 
by no means isolated cases, and such disfigurements were generally counted 
honorable scars. 

Laud had other means of attaining his object. In the true spirit of a grand 
inquisitor, he sent his spies everywhere, and nearly every conventicle was 
reported, every petty gathering of sectaries broken up. In 1639, shortly before 
the crash came, several bishops assured him that not one dissenter could be found 
in their dioceses. Winthrop and his noble colony had gone to found Boston in 
1630; such as could not leave the country went to church, rather than bear the 
penalties of staying away. The fear of jailors and hangmen produced an out- 
ward show of conformity, but at what a terrible cost ! Rage and vengeance 
burned in the hearts of those who were forced to witness what they considered 
half-Romish abominations. Their grandfathers had complained, as did Milton, 
that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large;" they said far worse things 
now, below their breath — violent and bitter things, which there is 110 need of 
repeating. The bishops had themselves to thank for it, if prelacy was considered 
as bad as popery. The clergy, who justified every usurpation of the king's, and 
denounced resistance to his will as if it were the will of God, were raising up 
foes who would soon thrust them forth from their pulpits, it might be to starve. 
For generations the Established Church has been detested by thousands of 




GLASTONBURY ABBEY. 



646 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 647 

devout people, she is still disliked and shunned by many, because her rulers for 
a time grossly abused their trust, and forced her into the wickedly false position 
of a persecutor. 

FAILURE OF TYRANNY IN SCOTLAND. 

The king and the archbishop met their first serious check through their 
stupidity in trying to force the Anglican system, with a liturgy of Laud's 
own editing, upon turbulent and wilful Scotland. The book was introduced in 
St. Giles' cathedral, Edinburgh, on July 23d, 1637; but it did not come to stay. 
Jenny Geddes, an old seller of apples, hurled her stool at the dean's head as he 
was reading what she supposed to be the Romish mass. A riot ensued ; the min- 
isters refused to use the book, and the magistrates found a way to evade the royal 
command. The news caused great commotion in England, and pleased many 
who liked the Church service, but wished its use to be left optional ; for all 
Episcopalians were not bigots and tools of tyranny. The wild pamphleteers 
were encouraged to break loose again, and one of them invited all to oppose the 
bishops as "robbers of souls, limbs of the beast, and factors of antichrist.'' 
Another solemnly assured his readers that " hell was broke loose, and the devils 
in surplices, heads, copes, and rochets were come among us." Extravagances of 
this kind, however lamentable, are not so severely to be condemned as the bru- 
talities which called them forth. Vast crowds attended the punishment of these 
writers on their passage from the palace-yard to jail, and plainly testified their 
sympathy with the victims. Hampden again stood forth as the champion of the 
country against ship-money, and the trial excited great interest. 

The troubles in Scotland went on, and neither party would give way. The 
king's demand for submission was answered by an enthusiastic renewal of the 
National Covenant, which had been drawn up and signed in 15S0, binding the 
nation to the Presbyterian faith and policy. It closed with these words : ' We 
promise and swear, by the great name of the Lord our God, to continue in the 
profession and obedience of the said religion, and that we shall defend the same, 
and resist all their contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation 
and the utmost of that power which God has put into our hands, all the clays of 
our life." This was eagerly subscribed by numbers in the churchyard of Grey 
Friars, Edinburgh, on March 1st, 1638. Copies were carried about the country 
for more signatures, and the pulpits rang with cries for its support. Everywhere 
the people pressed forward : many signed with tears ; some, it was said, used their 
blood in place of ink. Nor was this an empty form ; far from it. Charles threat- 
ened war: the Scotch called back their volunteers from Germany, raised troops 
at home, and a voluntary tax for their support. With great difficulty the king 
collected twenty thousand men at York, and crossed the border; but General 
Leslie offered him battle, and he was forced to yield, agreeing to summon a free 
assembly and a Scottish Parliament. 



64S THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

NO GOVERNING WITHOUT PARLIAMENT. 

These promises lie never meant to keep ; but he could not hope to conquer 
Scotland without money, which he could get only from Parliament. It met in 
April, 1640, the first in eleven years. The hopes of the country mounted high, 
but they were soon dashed. Pym and Hampden were at the front, and the 
Houses wished to consider grievances before granting supplies. They were dis- 
missed as of old, after sitting but three weeks. 

Wentworth had been long in Ireland, which by severe measures he had 
reduced to an appearance of perfect order. His motto was "Thorough," and he 
boasted that the king was absolute there, if not at home. He was now made 
lord-lieutenant and Earl of Strafford, and came back with eight thousand men, 
to reduce Scotland. But he was beaten without a battle. The Scotch crossed 
the border before he could, and occupied Newcastle : his troops were more ready 
to mutiny than to fight. England was almost in revolt. The people felt that 
the northern rising was in their own interest, and called these futile efforts to 
suppress it "the bishops' war." Defeated, humiliated, and helpless, the would-be 
autocrat summoned the peers to meet at York, without the lower house. It was 
a step without precedent, and it did not work at all. There was nothing left but 
to call a Parliament. 

It met on November 3d, 1540, united and resolute — the famous Long Parlia- 
ment, which was to sit for thirteen years and do great deeds. Its first acts were 
to break down the machinery by which despotism had done its work. The Star 
Chamber, the High Commission, the Council of York, were destroyed ; the politi- 
cal prisoners were released ; procedings were instituted against the king's bad 
advisers. Chief-Justice Finch fled the country ; Strafford and Laud were com- 
mitted to the Tower. The hottest wrath was directed against the earl : " That 
grand apostate to the commonwealth," said Lord Digby, " must not expect to be 
pardoned in this world till he be dispatched to the other." He was impeached 
on November nth, and a bill of attainder was passed at the end of April. 
On May 12th he met his death with a cheerful dignity, amid the joyful shouts 
of a crowd who welcomed the fall of tyranny's strongest prop. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 



THE REVOLUTION. 



URING the first months of their session, Parliament acted almost 
as one man. The work they had to do was obvious, and 
there were few differences of opinion about it. But when 
they came together after a short recess, at the end of Octo- 
ber, 1 64 1, they were divided between two parties. These, 
during the Civil War, were known as Cavaliers and Round- 
heads ; afterwards, for two hundred years, they were called 
Tories and Whigs ; in our time they are usually styled Con- 
servatives and Liberals. Through constantly changing 
issues the main principles of each have been the same, and 
one or the other has drawn its majority from that large body 
of waverers, doubters, and moderates, which always 'stands 
between the two. 

The sympathies of Americans go out naturally to 
Bnglish liberals, and it would be impossible for us to 
forget the debt which we and all free people owe to the 
Puritans and to those who with them spoke and fought against a misguided 
king. But it would be a mistake to suppose that all the truth and all the 
virtue were on their side. The case was not as simple as that of the Nether- 
lands against Philip II. It had been until 1641 ; but the quarrel had now 
reached a point at which intelligent, honest, and patriotic men might and did 
differ seriously. We must remember that the republican experiment had not 
then been tried in England ; that the people were deeply attached to the mon- 
archy, though they might justly hate the king for his misdeeds ; that a legiti- 
mate title was all-important, and that there was no successor at hand who could 
be put on the throne in place of the impracticable Charles. These facts greatly 
complicated the situation ; if we duly heed them, they will explain the position 
of the new or royalist party, which was organized by Hyde, afterwards Lord 
Clarendon and fatber-in-Jaw of James II. 




CAVALIERS AND ROUNDHEADS. 



These men said, in substance, "We detested the misrule of Strafford and 
Laud, but that is at an end. We have vindicated the law, redressed grievances, 

(649) 



650 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

purged the churches of popish innovations, and stripped the king of his illegal 
powers ; let us preserve and support those he has by law and long custom. He 
promises to be reasonable in future, and we have provided that three years shall 
not pass without a Parliament. We have had disturbances enough ; let us shake 
the foundations of the State no further, but give our attention to preventing addi- 
tional damage and maintaining things as they are." 

The other party replied, "We know how much respect the king has for our 
liberties, and what his promises are worth. If good laws could restrain him, we 
had enough of them ; but how has he regarded Magna Charta and the Petition 
of Right ? It is only fear that holds him in check : remove that, and he will 
break loose again. No : he is not to be trusted, and Parliament must keep the 
power." 

These discussions had only begun, when they were emphasized by terrible 
news from Catholic Ireland. The native chiefs of Ulster, relieved of Strafford's 
stringent rule, had risen in revolt ; thousands of Knglish colonists had been 
massacred, and rumor magnified the tale of frightful outrages. An army was 
needed to avenge these crimes and restore order ; but an army was what Charles 
wanted to overawe Parliament. Harsh suspicions arose, hinting at a concerted 
plan, and soon the Irish rebels pretended to be acting for the king and by his 
authority. His wife was a Papist, and it was whispered that his Protestantism 
was none too sound. He expressed a hope that these troubles might "hinder 
some of the follies" at home. When he returned from the north in November, 
all was confusion and terror. A hostile measure of remonstrance barely passed 
the Commons. Falkland, Hyde, and Colepepper became his ministers. The 
extreme liberals, talked of removing to New England. The triumph of the roy- 
alists seemed to be at hand. 

ATTEMPT TO ARREST THE FIVE MEMBERS. 

It was frustrated by Charles himself, whose stupid perfidy could generally 
be trusted to confound his friends and play into the hands of his enemies. 
After refusing Parliament a guard, and promising to defend it from all assaults 
as he would his children, he attempted an act of gross violence, in contempt of 
its time-honored rights. On January 3d, 1642, he sent his attorney-general to 
bring a charge of treason against five leading members of the opposition, Hamp- 
den, Pym, Hollis, Strode, and Hazelrig, and a herald to demand their surrender. 
On the next day, urged by the queen and followed by many of his courtiers and 
servants, he went in person to Westminster Hall to arrest the five. They were 
not there, for the House had sent them off in time ; but for this prudence, there 
would probably have been a bloody conflict, for the Commons would hardly per- 
mit such an outrage without resistance. Charles asked if the men he wanted 
were present. The Speaker answered, with spirit and tact, that he had no eyes 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



6<i 



to see nor tongue to say anything but what the House commanded. The tyrant 
withdrew, angry and foiled. 

The news flew like lightning. London arose in wrath ; men poured in by 
thousands, each with the Parliament badge on his hat, from the surrounding 
country. The Houses were no longer without a guard ; nor was there any more 
doubt which side had the majority. The king was almost besieged and mobbed 
in his palace. On the tenth he left the city, while the five members returned in 
triumph. The die was cast, though six months were spent in vain negotiations. 




WINDSOR CASTLE. 

"If I granted your demands," said Charles, "I should be no more than the mere 
phantom of a king." 

In the struggle that ensued, the lines were not always clearly drawn : there 
was a sliding scale of principles and feelings. At one end were the bishops, the 
ruffling courtiers, and the Romanists ; at the other were the vio'ent separatists. 
Between these was the v mass of all ranks and conditions, who prepared sadly 
and doubtfulty for civil war. As Macaulay says, it was a question of degrees : 
both parties loved order and liberty, but some laid more stress on one, others 
preferred the other. "A few enthusiasts on one side Avere ready to lay all laws and 



652 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

franchises at the feet of kings. A few enthusiasts on the other side were bent on 
pursuing, through endless civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic. 
But the great majority of those who fought for the crown were averse to des- 
potism, and the great majority of the champions of popular rights were averse 
to anarchy." 

A VIEW OF BOTH SIDES. 

Two opposite considerations, so far from our horizon that we are apt to over- 
look them, swayed many. A pure fanaticism of magnanimous loyalty had place 
in some minds, and seemed to suspend the exercise of their reasoning powers. 
Lovelace, who wrote two of our most exquisite lyrics, asks in one of his poems 
what idea, what cause, a man may look to and fix upon as his highest good. 
After searching in vain in several quarters, he answers, The King! A most 
absurd conclusion, in our modern view ; but Lovelace was a gallant gentleman, 
and died in wretched poverty, having spent all for his delusive ideal. Thus 
other brave and generous hearts, who saw that the man Charles Stuart was un- 
worthy, fancied the king entitled, in his extremity, to their fortunes and their 
lives. They deserved a better altar for their sacrifices. 

Again, fear of the Puritans drove many to the same side. Artists, actors, 
all who minister to men's amusements, knew that their bread would be gone 
if the Roundheads came into power. So at the other social extreme, and in 
every class : thousands hated cant and loved jollity. Falkland, the most learned 
and lovable nobleman of his time, prized above all things the right of unrestricted 
thought, and knew that this would be less disturbed in the Church than among 
the theologic sectaries. He loved liberty and his fellow-men as much as any ; he 
hated the idea of civil strife ; he saw almost equal good and evil on either side ; 
but he had to choose between them. He went forth discouraged, doleful, looking 
for a speedy death, and fell at Newbury, groaning "Peace, peace!" in a cause 
that was not his. 

On the other hand, not all on the popular side, by any means, were severe 
devotees or plain rustics. Hampden and Pym, the great leaders of the Com- 
mons, were accomplished men of enlarged minds, who sacrificed taste to prin- 
ciple, and looked to the long future rather than to the moment at hand. Both 
died early, one in arms, the other in his bed, leaving a glorious memory of 
services to civil and religious liberty. Between them and Falkland was small 
difference of sentiments and character ; but they saw more clearly and further 
ahead than he. Five great lords adhered to the Parliament, and the Karl of 
Essex took command of its army ; but most of the nobles and gentry were for the 
king. Thirty-three peers and sixty members of the Commons joined him at 
York, to fight for they scarce knew what, and enter on a struggle of which no 
man could foresee the end. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 653 

CIVIL WAR. 

Hostilities began in August, 1642. At first the Royalists had the advantage, 
for their troops were better drilled and led. They defeated the Earl of Stamford 
at Stratton, broke Waller's line at Roundway, and took Bristol, the second city 
in the land. Essex proved but a poor general, and his subordinates had little 
experience. Of the statesmen, Hampden alone showed any capacity in the field, 
and he, after saving the day at Edgehillin June, 1643, rode home with a mortal 
wound received at Chalgrove from Rupert's men. This prince from the Palatiuate, 
a nephew of Charles, was a dashing cavalry leader, and for a time seemed to 
have things much his own way. The court was now at Oxford, and London 
trembled. Had matters gone on thus, the Cause was doomed. The-Lords were 
for peace, and six of them fled to the king; the Commons were importuned in 
the same interest, and some of them wavered. 

But Charles was no manager, and failed to improve his opportunity. He 
met a check in besieging Gloucester, which was relieved just in time. He alien- 
ated his supporters by making terms with the Catholic rebels of Ireland, and 
bringing over an army of them to invade Scotland. At this some of his officers 
threw up their commissions ; the peers who had lately joined him returned to 
London, and the Parliament was again united. The Scotch at once came to terms 
with England, imposing their own forms of belief, order, and worship on the 
sister state, for nothing less would satisfy them. On September 25th, 1643, tr:e 
Commons signed the Covenant, which bound them to " bring the churches of 
God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, 
confession of faith, form of church government, direction for worship, and cate- 
chizing, that we, and our posterity after us, may as brethren live in faith and 
love, and the Lord may delight to live in the midst of us." 

Thus was England made Presbyterian at a stroke. So far as the Parlia- 
ment's power extended, the Episcopal clergy were expelled from their livings : 
a little later, it was done everywhere. This was their punishment for preaching 
the divine right of kings and blocking the course of liberty ; but the change was 
not to last, for one violence bred another, and the seesaw was to go up and down 
for years yet. The arrangement was mainly the work of Pym, who himself pre- 
ferred the Episcopal forms ; but he labored with all his great powers, till his 
death in December, to attain the great end in view, which was to put down the 
Royalists and secure constitutional government. 

CROMWELL AND THE IRONSIDES. 

But now a new and! unforeseen factor came into the problem. Oliver Crom- 
well had been to all appearance an ordinary country squire, little known outside 
his own neighborhood, till he entered Parliament in 1640. Some years before that, 
disgusted with the tyranny of Laud and Strafford, he had thought of removing 



'654 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



to America. If lie had done so, the course of English history would have been 
different. When he entered the Parliament's army as a captain, at the age of 
forty-three, no one dreamed of his coming greatness. He soon rose to be colonel, 
developed amazing military genius, and prepared a body of men who could beat 




LEICESTER HOSPITAL, WARWICK. 



any soldiers in Europe. They were far above the ordinary privates in character 
and condition; decent, grave, sober, God-fearing, and of intense religious and polit- 
ical convictions. Independent thought and fervent zeal were the marks of the 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 655 

Ironsides. To a man they held opinions which, though perfectly familiar now, 
were then considered startling, if not shocking. As prelacy (in the language of 
the time) was a step onward from popery, and Presbyterianism another step 
beyond prelacy, so the system of the Independents was an advance on that of 
the Presbyterians. Their descendants are the Congregationalists, a body as prom- 
inent and highly esteemed as any in England or America; but they were few 
and obscure in 1642, and became great by their military successes. They held 
that a Christian congregation was complete and supreme in itself, that the clergy 
were not an order distinct from the laity, and that any converted man might 
preach. In politics they were "root and branch men," or radicals, caring little 
for customs, kings, councils, parliaments, or authorities of any sort. Their dis- 
cipline was so perfect that they could be allowed to have clubs and meetings 
without risk. Their morals were above reproach. Woman's honor was safe 
among them, and they touched no private property for their own profit ; but they 
had small patience with "Malignants," as they called the cavaliers, and none 
at all with altars, crucifixes, stained-glass windows, and the like. Their 
iconoclasm destroyed or marred many beautiful buildings, and is regretted to 
this day ; but these losses were a small price to pay for their inestimable services 
to liberty. 



MARSTON MOOR. 



For nearly two years the war had been waged in a languishing, half hearted 
way. The Earl of Essex thought it not polite to be too rough with the king, 
and others of the Parliament leaders, in the field or at Westminster, wished 
merely to tire Charles out and bring him to his senses — which was a hopeless 
task. All this was now to be changed. At Marston Moor, on July 2d, 1644, 
the Scotch were routed, while Cromwell on his side carried all before him, and 
then called back his men from the pursuit to defeat the rest of the Royalist army. 
A single incident shows the temper of these fierce Independents. One of them, 
a youth, as he lay dying, told his officer that a regret lay heavy on his mind : 
"it was that God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of His 
enemies." 

Marston Moor was a two-edged victory : it crushed the Royalist cause in the 
north, and proved, in conjunction with events a little later, that Cromwell and 
his Ironsides were the only hope of England. For on September 2d the king 
won two notable successes. Essex was surrounded in Cornwall and all his infan- 
try captured, while the Irish, with the Highlanders under Montrose, overthrew 
the Covenanters at Tippermuir, so that Perth and Aberdeen were presently at 
their mercy. At Newbury, on October 27th, Cromwell might have finished the 
business had he been allowed to charge with his brigade, but Lord Manchester, 
who was in command, was still for half-way measures. 



656 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The quarrel was taken into Parliament, where Cromwell spoke his mind 
most plainly. The war must be carried on more vigorously, he said, and the 
army must be remodelled. By his efforts and those of Sir Harry Vane "the 
Self-denying Ordinance" was passed on April 3d, 1645, which made military 
command incompatible with membership of either House. Essex, Manchester, 
and Waller were retired. Fairfax became head of the army, but Cromwell was 
its real chief. New officers were appointed, with less regard to birth and station 
than to their willingness and ability to fight. 

Meantime Archbishop Laud's long imprisonment had ended. He was tried 
in March, 1644, an( ^ beheaded on a bill of attainder, January 4th, 1645. Parti- 
sans on either side have tried to make him out a martyr, or a monster of wicked- 
ness. He was neither, but a well-meaning blunderer, who fatally misunderstood 
his age and his mission, and tried to serve God with the devil's tools. As a 
counsellor and instrument of tyranny, he deserved his fate ; as a mistaken 
Christian, he made a meek and edifying end. 

BATTLE OF NASEBY. 

The king won more victories at Leicester and Chester. It was plain that 
Cromwell, though a member of Parliament, could not be spared from the army, 
and the House permitted him to retain his commission for a short time. That 
violation of the Self-Renouncing Ordinance, even more than the Ordinance itself, 
saved the state. The triumphant Royalists marched in full force to Naseby, eager 
to crush the mob of canting rebels. " Never have my affairs been in so good a 
state," said Charles to his nephew. The Parliament men were largely raw, but 
full of zeal, as they met the foe on June 14th, 1645. Ireton's wing gave way 
under the charge of Rupert's horse: the king's infantry drove Fairfax and the 
centre : Cromwell and his Ironsides alone retrieved the day. As at Marston 
Moor, he broke and chased those first opposed to him, then turned upon the 
others and made havoc. Many were slain; five thousand laid down their arms ; 
the king escaped with a beggarly following of but two thousand. All his guns, 
baggage, and papers were taken; the latter, as usual, contained matter to enrage 
the victors and dispirit the royalists. • 

The war was practically over. It was easy for Cromwell to stamp out the 
embers of resistance in the south, and for his colleagues to reduce the remainder 
of the island. In the following spring the last royal force was destroyed at Stow. 
Its leader said, as he gave up his sword, "You have done your work now, and 
may go to play, unless you fall out among yourselves." 

EXECUTION OF THE KING. 

We need not follow in detail the confused and straggling march of subse- 
quent events. The king fled to the Scotch, who soon gave him up, for a price, 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



657 



to the commissioners of the English Parliament. Cromwell saw the importance of 
gaining and keeping possession of his person, and in June, 1647, placed him in 
the army's charge. He escaped in November, was retaken, and thenceforth kept 
a close prisoner. He could not be brought to terms, and Parliament passed an 
act declaring all negotiation with him to be treason. In spite of this, he kept 
intriguing with the Scotch and English Presbyterians, who, as a modern writer 
says, ''were always haunted by the notion that there was something sacred and 
inviolable in monarchy." These doings enraged the army and the Independents, 
so that in December, 1648, more than a hundred members were driven out of 
Parliament by what was called "Pride's Purge;" others had been expelled at 
an earlier date. Charles was brought to trial in London 
early in 1649 before a mixed court, condemned as a 
tyrant, murderer, and public enemy, and publicly ex- 
ecuted on January 30th, to the amazement 
of the world and the horror of most Eng- """>- 
lishmen. If we consider 
but a man, under 
the law like any 
other, then one 
who uses his head 
only to hatch mis- 
chief deserves to 
lose it; but if we 
remember that the 
prevalent feeling 
of that age and 
land recognized 
something half 
divine in the per- 
son of royalty, we 
must admit the 

truth of Macaulay's famous remark, that the execution was "not only a crime, 
but an error." It was never forgiven by public opinion, and such of the regicides 
as could be caught were put to death at the Restoration, when all other offenses 
were covered by a general amnesty. 

Cromwell disclaimed responsibility for the deed. Whether he planned it, 
or was overruled by the army, then the real power in England, is a question over 
which historians still disagree. He was a very busy and important man in those 
days, with much rough work to do abroad and at home ; for the royalists of every 
degree, who were far more numerous than the Independents, resented the king's 
treatment during these last years, and much more what they regarded as his 




OLD HOUSE IN CASTLE STREET, WARWICK. 



658 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

foul murder. The House of Lords was abolished, and of the Commons only a 
fragment, called the Rump, remained. The executive authority was vested in 
a Council of State, of which Cromwell was a leading member; he was also lieu- 
tenant-general of the army, though not at once its commander-in-chief. He had 
put down risings in Scotland and on the Welsh border in 1648 : in August, 1649, 
he went to Ireland as lord-lieutenant, and by the following May had that turbu- 
lent country as quiet as it was under Strafford. Charles II. was welcomed and 
proclaimed as king by the Scotch : Cromwell defeated them at Dunbar on Sep- 
tember 3d, 1650, and overthrew the Pretender at Worcester, exactly a year later. 
In these last campaigns he was commander-in-chief, succeeding Fairfax, who 
would not fight against men of the same faith. In politics or in war he was 
now without a rival and practically above the law. The Rump Parliament had 
become useless and a nuisance : he dismissed it with contempt on April 20th, 
1653, and summoned another, which installed him as Lord Protector, after which 
it too was dissolvedan December 

CROMWELL AS PROTECTOR. 

However irregular his title, he held it undisputed for five years, and though 
uncrowned, was one of the very greatest of British sovereigns. Before his eleva- 
tion the sublimest of English poets had hailed him as "our chief of men," and 

reminded him that 

" Much remains 
To conquer still : peace hath her victories 
No less renowned than war. New foes arise, 
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains. 
Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 

This appeal was hardly needed. "Free conscience," as the Puritans under- 
stood it, was safe in Cromwell's hands. He meant to make England "godly," and 
the "hireling wolves," as far as might be, were put down and kept down, along 
with the surplice, the theatre, Sunday sports, and similar enormities. How long 
the people would bear these restraints was another question. 

One aspect of his reign is. of indisputable glory. He lifted England from 
her low estate among the powers of Europe, and made her respected and feared 
by foreign tyrants. He did what no other sovereign had done in centuries, rais- 
ing a distant but commanding voice on behalf of the persecuted Vaudois. To 
this he was moved by another noble sonnet of Milton, " On the late Massacre in 
Piedmont : " 

" Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 659 

Forget not : in Thy book record their groans 

Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 

Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
The waves redoubled to the hills, and they 

To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway 

The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow 
A hundredfold, who having learned Thy way 

Early may fly the Babylonian woe." 

Cromwell, to his eternal honor, interposed in behalf of these abused fellow- 
believers, and not in vain. As an old writer says, "Nor would he be backward 
in such a work, which might give the world a particular opinion of his piety and 
zeal for the Protestant religion ; but he proclaimed a solemn fast, and caused 
large contributions to be gathered for them throughout the kingdom. Nor did 
he rest here, but sent his agents to the Duke of Savoy, a prince with whom he 
had no correspondence or commerce, and the next year so engaged the Cardinal 
•of France, and even terrified the pope, without so much as doing any favor to 
the English Roman Catholics, that the duke thought it necessary to restore all 
that he had taken from them, and renewed all those privileges they had formerly 
enjoyed. So great was the terror of the Protector's name. Nothing was more 
usual than his saying that his ships in the Mediterranean should visit Civita 
Vecchia, and the sound of his cannon be heard in Rome." 

THE RESTORATION. 

At home Cromwell ruled more justly than most legitimate sovereigns had 
done ; but he was not loved, and he grew unhappy at seeing the failure of his 
grand experiment. The bulk of the nation resented his usurpation, and chafed 
under the rule of the army and the strict manners of the saints. The thorough 
Puritans had never been more than a small minority ; they rose above the 
majority, and kept it down, by their moral force, their strenuousness of con- 
science. They had their day and their triumph; these passed, leaving solid 
results for liberty. The protector died September 3d, 1658, bequeathing his place 
to a son, who had neither strength nor will to keep it. He was displaced in a 
few months, and Charles II. welcomed back in 1660. 

The long-exiled monarch, though otherwise worthy of little respect, had 
more sense than the rest of his breed, and made no very active efforts to be a 
•despot. The bishops came back with the king : the Savoy Conference failed to 
adjust differences of belief and order, and in 1662, under a new Act of Uniformity, 
two thousand ministers, refusing to conform to the re-established order, resigned 
or were ejected from their benefices. Theirs was a hard lot, but it was exactly 
what had befallen the Episcopal clergy fifteen years before. The veering will 



66o 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



of the nation, expressed through its representatives in Parliament, was respon- 
sible for these changes. Our country was the first to avoid such blunders and 
scandals, by having no Established Church. 



THE COVENANTERS. 

The worst feature of this reign (and it had many bad ones) was the steady 
attempt to force Episcopacy upon Scotland^ and the consequent persecution of 
the Covenanters, whose heroism and sufferings have been celebrated by Sir 
Walter Scott and many other writers. The king had signed the Covenant him- 
self in 1650, but oaths and promises never bound a Stuart, and he had a grudge 
against the Scotch for the restraints they had laid upon him in his youth. The 
government of the sister kingdom was now placed in bad and cruel hands, and 
the most senseless and ruthless efforts were made to coerce the people into a 

mode of faith and worship which 
they det sted. The country was 
full of soldiers and spies: dra- 
goons invaded every cottage, and 
informers reported private pray- 
ers and opinions as acts of trea- 
son. The services which had 
prevailed there for more than a 
century were forbidden under 
heavy penalties, but in vain. 
Like the old Albigenses and 
Vaudois, the people gathered in 
wild mountain glens to hear the 
ministers, who threaded a dan- 
gerous way on foot, their Bibles 
beneath their cloaks, and their 
lives not worth a month's pur- 
chase. Men received the Com- 
munion, like Zisca's Taborites, 
with arms in their hands ; and 
while the trembling congrega- 
tions listened to the Word or 
received the bread of life, sentinels watched from the adjoining rocks. These 
meetings were no safer than those of the early Christians in the catacombs of 
Rome : often the wild troopers would come galloping in among them with oaths 
and pistol-shots. These ruffians were under little more restraint than Philip's 
Spaniards, and the manners of their employers were not much better. The 
murder of pious John Brown at his own cottage-door, familiar to almost every 




MAGNA CHAKTA ISLAND, WHERE THE GREAT CHARTER OF 
ENGLISH LIBERTY WAS SIGNED. 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 66 1 

reader of Sunday-school books a generation ago, was but one of man}' similar 
outrages. In the towns the jails were crowded, and executions frequent under 
forms of law. 

But the spirit of the people was not to be broken. Their old zeal for the 
Covenant gained new fervor : they rose in arms against their oppressors, and for 
some time maintained a guerilla warfare, the chief result of which was to increase 
the butcheries. The most detested of their foes was John Graham of Claverhouse, 
whose blood-stained figure has been perhaps unduly decorated by the great Scot- 
tish romancer. The handsome cadet of a noble house, he was active, fearless, 
and faithful to a bad cause. Beginning his home career of devastation in 1678 
as a lieutenant of cavalry under his cousin Montrose, he gained much fame 
among the royalists. At Drumclog, June 1st, 1679, ^' ls small force was routed 
by the resolute peasants. Smarting under this defeat, he led the horsemen under 
Monmouth to an easy victory at Both well Bridge three weeks later, and did most 
of the slaughtering. Four hundred were slain in the pursuit, and twelve hun- 
dred prisoners taken, who were treated with great cruelty in their confinement. 
After this Graham's work consisted chiefly in hunting down his victims in their 
retreats. This wretched business went on through this and the next reign. 

JAMES 11. 

In the last years of Charles II. there was much discontent in England. 
Two famous patriots, Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, were executed in 1683 
for alleged connection with the Rye-House plot. The. king died in the commu- 
nion of the Church of Rome, to which his brother, James II., had long openly 
belonged. --His short reign, from 1685 to 1688, abundantly justified the fears of 
the nation, and was one of the most miserable periods in the history of England. 
Without his father's virtues, he had the same despotic temper, and a bitter 
bigotry of his own. Efforts had been made to exclude him from the succession, 
but had failed. The Duke of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II., raised 
the standard of rebellion, and was joined by many of all ranks. It was soon put 
down, and followed by the most frightful severities. The infamous Judge 
Jeffreys, in what was called the Bloody Assize, hanged three hundred and twenty 
persons of the western circuit. The atrocities of "Kirke's Lambs," the regiment 
of a certain brutal colonel, were equally well remembered. England was not 
used to these experiences, which were too much like the government of Philip 
and Alva in the Netherlands; yet a hundred years and more had passed since 
then, and the world had learned something of freedom and humanity. One of 
the earliest victims of this reign, Rumbold, beheaded with Argyle in Edinburgh, 
made a memorable utterance on the scaffold. "I never could believe," he said, 
"that God sent a few men into the world booted and spurred to ride, and millions 
saddled and bridled to be ridden." 



662 THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 

The Scotch persecutions went on, and were made hideous by the free use of 
the iron boot, the thumbscrew, and other instruments of mediaeval torture, on 
unlucky prisoners. One incident may be related to show the spirit of even the 
youngest Covenanters. A girl was tied to a stake on the beach, and offered her 
liberty if she would say "God save King James." Faithful to her catechism and 
mindful of the doctrine of election, she would repeat the prayer only with the 
qualifying clause, "if it be His will." This was not sufficient, and the judges 
sat by as the tide slowly came up and drowned her. 

THE END OF STUART TYRANNY. 

Every one knew that the king would try to impose his own religion upon 
the land, and waited for the crash to come. His preparatory steps were watched 
with anxious curiosity. In 1687 he tried to gain the support of the Dissenters, 
whom he hated, by removing some of their disabilities ; but the wiser heads 
among these tried lovers of liberty were not to be caught by so transparent a bait. 
By the end of three years the people had had enough and too much of their 
popish king, who had not the wisdom to pause, but went on displacing Protest- 
ants and appointing Romanists to high places in Church and State. The 
question arose, who should succeed him? He had but one son, an infant, by his 
second and Italian wife ; but his eldest daughter was married to the Prince of 
Orange, great-grandson of the illustrious founder of the Dutch Republic. On 
April 27th, 1688, James published a second Declaration of Indulgence, which 
struck at the law of the land and the purity of the Church. A week later he 
ordered it read in the churches. The clergy generally declined to obey, and 
seven bishops, among them the saintly Ken, author of the famous Morning and 
Evening Hymns, sent him a remonstrance. They were arrested, and on their 
way to the Tower were followed by the tears, prayers, and blessings of the people. 
These men, or some of them, believed in the divine right of kings, but they 
would not dishonor their office and injure the national cause. They were tried 
and triumphantly acquitted on June 29th. That night seven leading statesmen 
sent to William of Nassau, inviting him to come and take the throne. He came 
in November with an army ; England rose almost as "one man to welcome and 
support him. The tyrant fled to France, ousted by his own son-in-law. Queen 
Mary's conduct has been blamed as unfilial, but in such a case the lower duty 
merges in the higher. Justice, freedom, the public welfare, have stronger 
claims than a besotted and faithless father. 

He never came back to England. His fanatical adherents raised his stand- 
ard in Scotland, and Claverhouse, now Viscount Dundee, was mortally wounded 
at Killiverankie in July, 1689. James, with French aid, invaded Ireland and made 
a stand, but was overthrown in the battle of the Boyne, July 1st, 1690. The 
united kingdoms had a constitutional sovereign, and were rid of the Stuarts. 




(66 3 ) 



664 



THE STORY OF OUR CHRISTIANITY. 



Thus were the liberties of England won. Or rather, they were won by 
successive steps which we have traced; by the teaching of the Reformers, by the 
martyrs under Mary, by the defeat of Spanish invasion, by the Puritans who 
resisted Charles I., and by this almost peaceful revolution. Other minor 
struggles there were, almost to our own day, and one mighty rising against the 
foolish king George III., which was fought out in this western land for both 
America and England. But into this the question of religion scarcely entered ; 
men had learned at length to leave matters of faith and worship to private 
consciences. 




f -/ .^p,- VJ&'U^:^^ 




CONCLUSION. 

E have traced the history of religious liberty through 

several of its most important chapters. The early 

Christians, in submitting meekly to pagan persecu- 

y^^^MQw/L^P^\ ^ on » were watering with their blood the seed their 

Master had planted, and securing the triumph of the 
faith for which they died. The Albigenses and the 
Hussites, defending with the sword what they believed 
to be the Truth as it is in Jesus, were forerunners of 
the Protestant Reformation. The Huguenots and 
the Hollanders stood and struck for the principles at once of the Reformation, 
of national welfare, and of civilized and modern life. We of to-day are debtors 
to all of them ; they fought our battle, and won victories not only for themselves, 
but for generations then unborn. The Puritans, at a yet later day, did their 
large part in winning freedom for England and America. These conflicts were 
not merely local and temporary, nor yet for mere points of creed : they were for 
the most precious possessions of humanity — the religion of Christ and the rights 
of private conscience. These two are not to be put asunder. To try to sever 
them — to maintain faith by mere authority, denying and suppressing the indi- 
vidual's right to think and choose for himself — was the insane and wicked effort 
of tyrants and destroyers like Philip II. and Alva. God meant His creatures to 
be free, and sent His Son to proclaim and ensure that freedom. The service 
He desires is not that which comes by the compulsion of courts and edicts, but 
the voluntary homage of the heart. 

But the best and greatest ends can be attained only by slow and gradual 
process. Rome was not built in a day, and the world could not be converted in 
a century. It was not really and thoroughly converted when nominal paganism 
was overthrown. Paganism of mind and heart lingered for ages in the Church, 
and Christ was wounded again and again in the house of His professed friends. 
If the tree is to be judged by its fruits, it is not easy to see that the authors of 
the hideous crusades against Languedoc and Bohemia, of the Spanish Inquisition, 
of the flames which raged at Smithfield and over Europe through half of the 
sixteenth century, of the Blood-Council and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
were better than the pagan persecutors. Is a crime less criminal because it is 
done in the name of Him who taught purity and love ? Is tyranny less odious 
because it has carved Bible texts on its fetters, inscribed them on its headman's 

(665) 



666 CONCLUSION. 

axe, painted them on the banners of its destroying armies, chanted them over 
the graves of its victims ? 

The texts never justified or excused the tyranny. If the tyrants had under- 
stood the texts, they would have ceased to quote them, would perhaps have ceased 
to be tyrants. But the dullness of men's heads and the hardness of men's hearts 
made slow work of their understanding what all professed to honor. What to 
us is the most salient feature of the Gospel, the dominant note of the Master's 
teachings ? Humanity — the law of love, the sense of brotherhood, consideration 
for our neighbor. How long has this been generally recognized and accepted, 
even in theory ? Not three hundred years : one might say, hardly two hundred. 
Again, it is clear to every one who reads the New Testament in the light of our 
American institutions, that the two have one and the same spirit. Our Lord came 
as an emancipator, to break every yoke, to give sight to the blind and liberty to 
the captive, to remove the narrow prejudices of the past, to introduce the rule of 
gentleness and light. Candor, fairness, mental openness, breathe in all His say- 
ings. His chief apostle is full of sharp rebukes to those who would lord it over 
God's heritage, and play the judge and dictator in spiritual things. "Who art 
thou that judgest another man's servant ? To his own master he either standeth 
or falleth." " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." Yet how 
long has this plain principle been understood ? Only since the Netherlander, 
by seventy years' fighting, won the right to worship God in their own way, and 
the English Puritans taught the Stuarts that the mind of citizens is more than 
the will of kings. 

It has puzzled innumerable minds, who would trace the ways of Providence 
in history, to see why so many horrors and iniquities, such seas of human blood, 
such ages of darkness and slavery and wretchedness, should have been allowed 
to intervene between Christ's coming in the flesh and His coming, so to speak, 
in public opinion and general life — in the ideas of nations and the manners 
of multitudes. Why, when His kingdom was once set up and nominally accepted, 
should sixteen hundred years have elapsed before men began to realize that 
human bodies were temples of the Holy Ghost, that life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness were sacred things, not to be swept aside or tampered with at the 
whim of office-holders in Church or State? The Master explained this, so far as 
it can be explained, by pointing out the necessity of nature, the law of our pres- 
ent life. 

' ' All common good has common price ; 
Exceeding good, exceeding." 

No great gift comes easily and cheaply : every step of advance must be won 
through effort, labor, pain. It was so in His own life : it had to be so in that of 
His people. He was the Prince of Peace ; yet He came, He said, not to bring 



CONCLUSION. 



667 



peace at once, but a sword. The tissue of sacred facts could be completed only 
through the gloom of Golgotha, through what seemed disgraceful failure. 

"Disciples saw their Master bleeding 

Upon the cruel cross ; 
Heedless of better days succeeding, 

They mourned the battle's loss : 
Yet in that hour of their bewailing, 

While sin on sorrow railed, 
'Twas man who triumphed that was failing, 

'Twas Christ who died prevailed." 

So it had to be for near three hundred years, and often afterwards. As 
has been shown abundantly, the early martyrs, suffering but not striking, 
regarded themselves as combatants, spiritual gladiators. They fought the good 
fight of faith, "filling up that which was behind the sufferings of Christ ;" and 
in so doing they saved the Church from extinction or corruption by the pagan 
world, and preserved the inestimable treasure that had been committed to the 
Church's keeping. Through them again, as first in His own person, their 
Leader overcame the world ; and the society which claims Him as its Head 
reveres their memory as that of its chief servants and worthiest members, and 
calls them its "noble army." 

After them came innumerable martyrs, whose names, for the most part for- 
gotten on earth, are written in heaven, and whose obscure sacrifices, in ways 
which human eye cannot trace, helped to hand on the light which often burned 
like a little candle in the thick darkness of a naughty world. In time the king- 
dom that was not of this world became one of this world's kingdoms, and strove 
to be the mightiest of all. In time the Church, polluted with earth's pomp and 
wealth and weapons, seemed to be nearly (what it never was entirely) an apostate 
Church, and many who strove after primitive simplicity learned to disown and 
hate her. These, when they could, came together and made a stand for human 
rights. We have told the story of the Albigenses, not holding that, because 
they were beaten and crushed, they ought therefore to be forgotten. We have 
done no more than allude to the Vaudois, who for four hundred years kept up a' 
heroic though desultory and almost hopeless struggle in the north of Italy; nor 
to the Waldenses, who for almost as long,- and in nearly every land of Europe, 
went as sheep to the slaughter. These earned a collective fame which Christen- 
dom will not willingly let die ; and there were individual and isolated martyrs 
like Savararola, whose words and fate made lurid marks upon their time. The 
Hussites, first and alone, showed that a little nation might rise in godly wrath, 
defy Europe, and sink only through its own dissensions. Fierce, fanatical, and 
furious they may have been, but they learned these vices from their persecutors; 



668 CONCLUSION. 

their time was not as ours, and the history of great deeds can never be a record 
of sinless perfection. 

With the Reformation came in what we call modern times. The men of 
the sixteenth century seem nearer to us than those of preceding ages, but their 
opinions and deeds were possible only because others had labored and suffered 
in the same cause before. And the theologians might have studied and preached 
in vain, if others had not been ready to take their lives in their hands for the 
new faith, which they believed to be the old faith brought back. It was Mary's 
martyrs who chiefly turned England away from Rome : it was by the sword that 
religious liberty was won, in part and for a time, in France, and for all time in 
Holland. Each national triumph was a triumph too for such other nations as 
had grace to see and use the fact ; each step forward made other steps less difficult 
and more hopeful. The British battles of the seventeenth century were not so 
savage, so scandalous, as those of the continent two generations before. Much 
was yet to learn, but something had been learned already ; as always, there were 
ups and downs of political and moral fortune, leaps forwards and stumblings 
backward, but no great step really gained was ever wholly lost. 

It was otherwise on the continent, where the hideous Thirty Years' War wiped 
Protestantism out of southern Germany, and the tyranny of Louis XIV. drove 
it from France. We have not touched upon these doleful episodes ; such mys- 
teries of Providence would afford no cheerful reading. They were real and per- 
manent losses to humanity. England and America gained much, but the suffer- 
ings of innumerable exiles and martyrs are still matter for tears. The map of 
Europe, counting out its eastern part, was substantially made up in the sixteenth 
and seventeeth centuries : what was then done, for good or for evil, has been little 
altered since. Spain received its doom from Philip II. Holland still bears the 
stamp of the Silent Prince ; and when another William of Orange drove the 
last Stuart from his throne, England became in essence or potentiality what she 
is to-day. 

As for our own beloved country, it needs no words to prove that she is the 
heir of all lands and ages. Huguenot, Hollander, Puritan and Saxon have 
helped to make her what she is. Fleeing from persecution at home, they brought 
hither their unconquered consciences, their prized though varying beliefs, their 
resolute longings for a freedom the Old World could not afford. Trained in 
different creeds and fashions, they did not always understand at first that the' 
rights of others were as sacred as their own ; our Salem Witchcraft afforded a 
chapter of horrors not easily paralleled of its kind. But in time it came to be 
understood that civil and religious liberty, for you as well as for me, were absolute 
and inseparable. Our Revolution was the sequel to earlier wars abroad, the 
climax to efforts of the ancestors on whose foundation we built. Our Declaration 
of Independence made the noblest profession ever heard ; our Constitution, as 



CONCLUSION. 660 

amended in the light of later experience, secures the nearest approach that is to 
be found on earth to equal rights for all. We have our points of weakness and 
danger, but they do not include dominion over the private conscience unless by- 
its own consent. No national Church exists or is desired. The State has 
nothing to do with forms of belief or worship, which belong wholly to the indi- 
vidual. Each one of us is attached to his own opinions or confession, and quite 
willing to let his neighbors go a different way. Our relations of business, society, 
and friendship recognize no sectarian limits. If we think our neighbor is in 
error, we know that he has just as good a right to think the same of us. The 
notions which moved crusaders and inquisitors of old seem to us impossible, or 
fit only for a museum of monstrosities. 

Even abroad — this side of Russia and Turkey — the lessons of the past have 
not been wholly wasted, and few (we may trust) desire to revive the old methods 
of meddling, compulsion, and cruelty. The parent lands have moved on, though 
not at our pace. That one which most of us call the Mother Country, though 
she still has a monarch, an Established Church, and a legalized aristocracy, is 
in essentials almost as free as America. Two hundred years ago Dissenters, 
whatever their abilities and characters — men like Bunyan and Baxter — were 
liable to be put in jail, insulted by judges on the bench, or kicked and cuffed 
about as if they were hardly human. When Mr. Spurgeon died last year, he 
left the largest audiences in England, with an influence as great as any man's, 
and he was as such lamented as if he had been Archbishop of Canterbury. So 
with us. Two hundred years ago the people of Boston hated the name of bishop 
— with some reason — almost as much as that of pope. When Bishop Brooks died 
there lately, he was honored and beloved by everybody. Times and manners 
have changed, and greatly for the better. 

We are not perfect yet — far from it; but we are on the lines of progress. 
1 he errors of those who have gone before us, no less than their virtues and suc- 
cessors, are our lesson. History is still the great teacher of mankind ; its faithful 
records, in all the changes of events and issues, point out our interest, our duty, 
and our danger. The ideas of Christ, slowly penetrating the brains of succes- 
sive generations, too often misunderstood or denied by His professing people, 
have led the advancing march of civilization : they will continue to lead it in the 
future toward the final triumph of freedom, intelligence, and virtue, when the 
kingdoms of this world and the hearts of its inhabitants shall be entirely His. 

THE END. 



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